The Unfinished Journey: Restructuring Schools in a Diverse Society. a California Tomorrow Research and Policy Report from Theeducation for a Diverse Society Project

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 371 431 EA 025 665

AUTHOR Olsen, Laurie; And Others TITLE The Unfinished Journey: Restructuring Schools in a Diverse Society. A California Tomorrow Research and Policy Report from theEducation for a Diverse Society Project. INSTITUTION California Tomorrow,San Francisco. PUB DATE 94 NOTE 352p. AVAILABLE FROM California Tomorrow,FortMason Center,Building B, San Francisco, CA ($24plustax;20%quantity discount). PUB TYPE Books (010) Reports Research/Technical(143)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC15 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Administrator Role; Agency Cooperation; Case Studies; *Cultural Pluralism; Curriculum Development; Economically Disadvantaged; Elementary Secondary Education; *Equal Education; Ethnic Groups; Grouping (Instructional Purposes); Minority Groups; *Multicultural Education; Parent Participation; *School Restructuring; *State Action; Teacher Role IDENTIFIERS *California Tomorrow Plan; *Inclusive Educational Programs

ABSTRACT Restructuring public education is central to the task of creating a healthy, just society. For the past 2 years, California Tomorrow's Education for a Diverse Society/School Restructuring Project has visited 32 randomly selected schools throughout California and talked with 1,000 teachers, students, parents, administrators, and advocates involved in the restructuring movement. The research was shaped by three concerns: (1) changing demographics require changes in schools;(2) research has documented inequalities rooted in institutional structures; and (3) new challenges require new thinking about schools and support for educators engaged in the change procrss. The first section of this report, "New Compacts," discusses,he new roles and relationships being forged among teachers, administrators, public agency personnel, parents, and community child advocates. Section 2, "Curriculum and Pedagogy," examines schools' instructional reforms, focusing on student grouping, multicultural curriculum, technology, and language minority teaching issues. Section 3, "The Policy and Challenge of System-wide Change," highlights the crucial role of technical assistance infrastructure and professional development support, funding considerations, and accountability concerns. Section 4 contains appendices on research methodology, demographic information, a case study field guide, phone sample interview questions, restructuring resources, a glossary, and a case study school contact list. Contains 150 references. (MLH)

*********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** ._en,inis. e__,,ourne Restructuring Schools in a Diverse Society

A California Tomorrow Publication

U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (Moe of Educational Remerch and ImplOvel,Orf PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY EDU ATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERIC1 Th.s document has been reproduced as received from Ina person or VganalhOn a_ ong.nahng C M.no, changes have been made to imp,ove Al reproduchon cwahly The Unfinished Journey: Restructuring Schools in a Diverse Society

A California Tomorrow Research and Policy Report From the Education for a Diverse Society Project

By Laurie Olsen, Project Director Hedy Chang Denise De La Rosa Salazar Cecelia Leong Zaida McCall Perez Greg McClain Lisa Raffel CALIFORNIA TOMORROW CALIFORNIA TOMORROW is a non-profit organization committed to making racial and ethnic diversity work in California, and to building a society that is fair and open for everyone, Board of Directors especially the children who are our future.

Lewis H. Butler, Chair CALIFORNIA TOMORROW: Lily Wong Fillmore Identifies and reports on the joys, challenges and problems that diversity brings Bong Hwan Kim to schools and other institutions serving children and their families. Robert Friedman Martin Krasney Seeks out and reports on the people and programs that deal most successfully Stewart Kwoh with those challenges, and that build on the strengths of diversity. Antonia Lopez Delivers this news through publications and presentations to a broad cross-section Hugo Morales Joyce Germaine Watts of people. Brings outstanding teachers and other professionals together to share their expe- Co-Directors riences and perspectives on the challenges of a diverse California. Laurie Olsen Provides one-on-one consultation and assistance to schools, agencies and policy- Hedy Nai-Lin Chang makers striving to create services and institutions appropriate to the rich diversity of our peoples. Staff and Project Affiliates Through the media and other public forums, offers informed analysis of diversity Nancy Belton issues in California, both the challenges and the successes, to counteract public Denise De La Rosa Salazar ignorance, skepticism and fear. Cecelia Leong May Li Zaida McCall Perez CALIFORNIA TOMORROW Greg McClain Fort Mason Center, Building B Dora Maria Pulido San Francisco, CA 94123 Lisa Raffel (415) 441-7631

The Unfinished Journey: Restructuring Schools in a Diverse Society Editors: Carol Dowell and Lisa Raffel Design and Production: TechArt San Francisco Cover photograph: by Dexter Dong

Inside photographs: page 196: David Maung; page 221: courtesy Windsor Immersion School; pages 121, 162, 242, 272: Guy Maxwell; pages 33, 145, 155, 160, 164, 174, 251, 255, 259, 280: courtesy San Diego City Schools; all other photographs by Dexter Dong.

Funding for this project was generously provided by: The ARCO Foundation The GAP Foundation The Walter S. Johnson Foundation The Andrew Mellon Foundation The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation The David and Lucille Packard Foundation The Pew Charitable Trusts The San Francisco Foundation

4 Dedication

This report is dedicated to those individuals rethinking and restructuring our public schools to work better for all children. We greet your efforts with tremendous excitement and respect, because we have come to believe, after our long research, that restructuring is the road to a public schooling system that may finally offer a real promise of inclusion, justice and high quality education for all. But we also believe that this is a journey that will only get us there if many of us walk it, putting our heads together, questioning our own practices and pushing each other's thinking. California Tomorrow offers this report in the spirit of partnership. It is based on two years of research and much discussion and analysis. Even still, it is only a step. We raise in this report concerns and issues that the field has barely begun to understand. We challenge you to join us in thinking deeply and creatively about equity and diversity in the restructuring of schools. Together with you, we seek to play a part in rethinking what schools could he, must be, and what each of our roles can be to get us there. We look forward to the dialogue and to continuing the journey together. CONTENTS

The Unfinished Journey

Restructuring Schools in a Diverse Society

Acknowledgments 2

INTRODUCTION (preface) 5

Chapter 1 School Restructuring: The Promise, The Reality 12 Sidebar: The History of SB 1274: California's School Restructuring Initiative 24

SECTION 1 - NEW COMPACTS 26 Chapter 2Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 28 First Person: A Teacher's Perspective: The Six Year Process of Developing Schoolwide Dialogue on Multiculturalism by Gail Whang 48

Chapter 3The Changing Role of Teachers 58 Chapter 4Leadership for a Restructuring School: New Roles for Principals, New Power for Teachers 70 First Person: A Principal's View of Restructuring by Anastacio Cabral 86 Chapter 5The Involvement of Parents, Families and Caregivers in Restructuring Schools 92 School Profile: Vaughn Street Elementary: Lessons in Parent Involvement ....108

Chapter 6Community Forces for Change 112 First Person: A Community Leader's Perspective: The Commission for Positive Change in the Oakland Schools by Angela Glover Blackwell 128

Chapter 7School-Linked Services: Nurturing a Whole Child and Family Perspective 136 School Profile: O'Farrell Community School: Collaboration in Action 154

6 SECTION 2CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY 160 Chapter 8In Search of New and Flexible Student Groupings - Key to Student Learning162

Chapter 9Multicultural Curriculum 178 School Profile: Horace Mann Middle 188 School Profile: Oceana High 192 First Person: A Key Planner's Perspective: Site Management and Multicultural Curriculum by Moyra Contreras 196 Chapter 10Addressing the Language Barrier 206 School Profile: Windsor Elementary: A Two-Way Immersion School 220 Chapter 11New Uses of Technology 226 Sidebar: Opportunities in School Technology 234

SECTION 3 THE POLICY AND RESOURCE CHALLENGE OF SYSTEM-WIDE CHANGE 238 Chapter 12 The Tools for Change 240 School Profile: Valencia Park Elementary: A Comer School 250 Chapter 13 Towards Restructuring an Entire Public School System 258 Sidebar: The State's Restructuring Team: California Center for School Restructuring 270 First Person: A Union Representative's Perspective by Linda Tubach 272 Chapter 14 The Role of Funding in the Restructuring Movement 278 Chapter 15 Reflective School Communities & New Accountability: Keys To A Reformed School System 288

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 304

SECTION 4 APPENDICES 321

Research Methodology 322

Case Study Schools: Location and Demographic Composition of Student Population 326

Case Study Field Guide: Questions for Research at School Sites 328

Phone Sample Interview Questions 340

Resources for Restructuring Schools 342

Bibliography 351

Glossary 358

Case Study School Contact List 362 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This has been an intense and challengingco-editor of the report. As the process stretched project. As the project director, I beganon, it would have been easy to let go of the dif- this work with a design and a sense officult charge of collaborative writing whereby urgency. But the vision and work became notall seven people would agree on drafts of every just mine, but that of an entire team of peoplechapter. But it was always Lisa who insisted on that I feel truly blessed to have worked with. the importance of the involvement of ali,nd of The work exploded in scope from an origi-devoting the time that democratic participation nal plan to conduct 12 case studies, to a labordemands. Thus, while Lisa's concrete research that took us to 32 schools for indepth case stud-skills and perspectives were important, it was in ies and more than 1,000 interviews in all cor-the values she infused that she most indeliby ners of the state, within a tight time line and ashaped our work. tighter budget. The hard work and thinking Greg McClain's thoughtful research skills, were truly a collaborative effort. A multi-disci-sense of humor and depth of caring for the indi- plinary and diverse team of seven workedviduals with whom he worked held the project together for over two years to select schools fortogether in many ways. The project team came inclusion in the study, conduct field visits, ana-to rely on Greg's ability to put our interviewees lyze the data, plan and host retreats of educatorsat ease and to convey to people in the field our for feedback on our analysis, draft and critiquerespect and concern for their work. Greg also chapters of the report, and agonize long andpatiently coordinated many of the unending hard over our final message, tone and language. logistical tasks of the massive project. With a This publication fully belongs to the wholebackground in the law and a personal concern team. The process of working so closely and col-for high-risk youth who are alienated from laboratively across our multiple perspectives notschool, Greg asked the questions of an "out- only deepened the analysis, it greatly deepenedsider" that pushed us to keep linking the each of our understandings of the complexitiesspecifics of schooling to the much larger con- of culture and language in schools, and of thecerns of building a strong multicultural society. impact of racism and discrimination in schools, Zaida McCall Perez joined the project team in the lives of children, and in our own lives.as an educator on loan from Hayward Unified Throughout this collaborative effort, each mem-School District where she was serving as both ber contributed in importantly unique ways. Bilingual Coordinator and as head of the Lisa Raffel joined the project as an elemen-English Language Center for newcomer stu- tary school teacher interested in becoming partdents. Zaida's years of training and experience of a research project. A remarkably perceptivein bilingual education and as a site administra- and compassionate human being, Lisa was abletor brought a critical perspective that opened to walk into schools and recognize levels ofmany avenues to new questions and issues in complexities in their organization and climateour field work. In many ways, Zaida became a that greatly informed the entire project. Herteacher to the rest of the team about the persistent drive for as truthful and deep anrealities of school districts, about the complexi- analysis as possible kept us all focused upon theties of implementing policies, about strategies data. In the last five months of the project, asfor advocating and serving immigrant and bilin- flurries of drafts were being refined, it was Lisagual students, and about the politics of schools. who held us to precision in our thinking andOften teamed for field visits with project staff the highest standards of accuracy in our por-who had less knowledge and less years of expe- trayals of what we had seen in the field asrience, Zaida modeled wonderful teaching. She well as to principles of compassion and supportsupported and encouraged staff to voice their for educators. It was by virtue of this dedica-perspectives, was forthcoming with an awe- tion to the final product and her gift for orga-some breadth of information, and always giving nizing complex concepts that Lisa became aof her time.

8 2 The Unfinished Journey Denise De La Rosa Salazar joinedstate. And, finally, as my Co-Director, Hedy California Tomorrow with experience as a poli-was a dear friend and essential support in the cy analyst for the National Council of La Razamoments when it felt that the volume of work in Washington, D.C. Denise's grounding ofwould overwhelm us, when the masses of data school issues in the context of policy greatlythreatened to never make sense, and when pro- sharpened our analysis. Her knowledge of theject team nerves were frazzled. It convinced me literature on Latino education was essential inonce again how rewarding a Co-Directorship contextualizing our field work in relation to acan be, particularly with someone as wonderful broad range of issues affecting the Latino com-as Hedy. munity. As the lone staff member living and As we neared the completion of a draft of working daily in the Los Angeles area, we alsofindings, we enlisted the assistance of Carol relied on Denise to keep us connected to issuesDowell, who has edited many California in the largest school district in the state. AlwaysTomorrow publications. Agreeing to edit the positive and determined, Denise also travelledmanuscript in the early fall of 1993 on top of many more miles than any other staff memberher job as a writer for Radio Bilingue in Fresno, for the project, and she never missed a plane orCarol had no idea what she was stepping into. a deadline. Attempting to answer to the concerns, voices Cecelia Leong brought to the project team aand perspectives of a team of seven quite opin- background in public policy and integrated ser-ionated and diverse people, all highly invested vice delivery. Participating in all site visits toin the final product, Carol became far more schools involved in school linked services,than an editor. She had to exercise her enor- Cecelia helped us all understand the complexi-mous skill as a facilitator and mediator, absorb ties of the collaborative services reform move-our seven different voices, and try to create one ment. Cecelia also brought her wry sense ofunified voice that satisfied us all. Working her humor, economic analysis, clear thinking and amagic with words together with her magic with tremendous precision in delivering on projectpeople Carol has made this final publication work for which she was responsible. Cecelia ispossible. She is walking away from the job with a crucial team member, always there when wethe enormous respect, gratitude and love of the need her, and unfailing and unsatiable in herseven of us with whom she worked in the appetite for bad jokes and for knowledge. process. Hedy Chang became part of this project In addition to the project team, California team both as Co-Director of CaliforniaTomorrow contractedwithCatherine Tomorrow and to infuse her wide expertise inMinicucci and Minicucci Associates to assist in the field of school linked services. The combi-the design and conduct of the telephone inter- nation of Hedy's very specific programmaticviews. As always, Cathy delivered the work knowledge and her overall vision of Californiawith great professionalism. Tomorrow made her a critical member of the Thanks to Linda Everstz, staff to California project team. In substance, this project attempt-Tomorrow's Curriculum Project, for her help in ed to knit together the two major school reformframing the chapter on Technology. movements of restructuring and school linked At numerous points in the project, we relied services, which to date have been woefully frag-upon a group of people whose opinions and mented. Through numerous late night long con-expertise we respect for consultation, advice versations between Hedy and myself, the imper-and direction. These included early discussions atives and complexities of the overlap betweenwith Paul Berman, Julia Koppich, Milbrey these reform movements began to be clear. BothMcLaughlin and Anne Wheelock that helped Hedy's extraordinary policy sense and energyshape the project design. We assembled a group inevitably broadened our analysis of what weof national advisors in Chicago in August of had seen in the field, and helped us hone it into1993 to review initial findings, and to help us a specific vision and policy direction for theunderstand the national implications of our

Cl Acknowledgments 3 work. Struggling through a massive first draft For assembling the student artwork that of the manuscript, this group patiently helpedgraces these pages, we'd like to thank Mary us understand how we might make the reportHeeb, Chris Ashley, Connie DeCapite, and Bob more useful and also encouraged us as to theCarraveo. We also thank photographer Dexter import and national implications of the work.Dong for once again contributing his finesse We are deeply endebted to our national advi-with a camera and with deadlines, so that many sors for their time and wisdom: Mike Timpane,of the images here of school communities could Sonia Nieto, Howard Fuller and Paula Wolff. accompany our words. Glen Shannon and Harold "Doc" Howe was also an importantEmma Rybakova of Tech Art in San Francisco member of this advisory group, but serveddid a beautiful and rapid-fire job on the design another crucial role as well. He has been ourand production of the book, for which we offer "angel"regularly dispatching pertinentour great thanks. research and articles, sending notes of encour- For agreeing to be interviewed and to let us agement, and helping us connect with others inuse their personal profiles to demonstrate the the nation who share our concern for buildingreal faces, voices and people behind this mighty schools appropriate to a diverse society. restructuring movement, we thank Angela While she was unable to participate in theGlover Blackwell, Anastacio Cabral, Moyra Chicago meeting, Michelle Fine read the manu-Contreras, Linda Tubach and Gail Whang. script and gave us a wonderfully useful "criticalJackie Murioz did a wonderful job of conduct- friend" critique, posing key questions thating the interview with Anastacio Cabral. We helped us shape the final draft. After the veryare also grateful to her, as well as to Gail first sharing of tentative findings at a confer-Whang, for their help at our Spring 1993 ence in Santa Cruz more than a year ago, Steveretreats in shaping interactive and group build- Jubb came forward and initiated what woulding activities. become an important dialogue shaping our California Tomorrow is a small organiza- understanding of the thrust and politics of thistion. There is no way that a project as encom- restructuring movement. Since that time, Stevepassing as this one could progress without the has read and critiqued the manuscript and hadabundant support of those who hold together several crucial conversations with us aboutthe core of the organization. Thanks to Nancy California Tomorrow's research and how itBelton, our office manager, and to May Li, might become maximally useful to restructuringoffice assistant, for their concrete assistance, schools. We are grateful for the time, thought-professionalism and patience. And, to Lew fulness and directness of that dialogue. Butler, our founder and chair of our Board of This work grew originally out of ourDirectors, for his shared wisdom and unfailing involvement with the National Coalition offaith. Advocates for Students, and the work to develop Finally, thanks to all the people in the the Good Common School vision. We would likerestructuring school sites and communities we to acknowledge NCAS co-directors Joan Firstvisited for opening your doors, sharing your and Richard Gray, and the entire NCAS Boardexperiences, and taking the time for us. We hope of Directors for their roles in grounding ourthis report honors your work and gives you own work in a context of advocacy nationwide. inspiration for continuing the essential task of For help in compiling statistics on statewidecreating equitable schools for all our children. patterns of student achievement, we are grateful to two staff members of the California Laurie Olsen Department of Education: Jim Greco and Gayle Project Director Webb. January 1994

10 4 The Unfinished Journey INTRODUCTION

This report is about what is probably the most significant issue in American education. It isn't mentioned in A Nation at Risk, or the host of education reform agendas that have been put before Con- gress. Yet, it is central to the future of our nationit is the issue of diversity and what we as a people are willing to do to create a healthy, just society. We are at a crossroads. In the past decade, waves of immigration have brought people from literally all over the world to our nation resulting in the most culturally, linguistically, ethnically diverse society that has ever existed. As we witness the devastation of ethnic fighting in nations around the world, and the rage and pain in our own country rooted in pervasive racial and economic inequities, the imperative of forging a new and positive response to diversity becomes clear. Every era in history presents its unique challengesin the United States in the last decade of the 20th century, this is our challenge. A whole new society is emerging. Yet we still lack the vision, the will, the policy, the institutions and the schools to ensure that this new society will affirm full participation, social justice and democracy for all. We are in fact growing more divided as a society: the haves and the have-nots, the politically represented and the non-represented, the educated and the ill-educated, white people and people of color. We all must play our role in shaping a just society or consign our nation to a future of even greater disparities, hostility and lost human potential. Central to the task of creating a new society is public education. This report is about restructuring schools. It is about teachers, school principals, parents, and neighbors who see that the old ways of schooling aren't working for many students, and so they dare to try to invent better ones in their place. Restructuring is one of the most active school reform movements in the nation today. It means new ways of grouping students for learning, new teaching approaches, new leadership and community involvement. Restructuring brings freedom for school staff to go after their dreams to make their schools better, along with agonizing growing pains and endless demands for more and more of their personal time and energy. California Tomorrow journeyed among some of these schools that appeared to be so ignited by the prospect and process of change. We had many questions and learned things we hadn't imagined. But our fundamental question was, amidst the excitement, hope and promise of restructuring, are schools reshaping themselves to truly meet the needs of all students, in all their diversity of race', culture, language and individual experience? Our research found that, although the restructuring movement is indeed full of promise and on the road, it will take new leadership and support for the movement as a whole to answer that critical challenge. Schools must be restructured to address diversity and equity for reasons that arc at once moral and practical. The nation is in the midst of a major economic crisis. Our society suffers from failures in the past to

Introduction 11 5 educate all children fully and to open up the political process to all. Yet, we are dependent upon the ability of all to be productive and involved as citizens, workers and community members. We can not afford to perpet- uate the ill education and alienation of another child. We are killing ourselves from within by policies and practices that exclude, deny, and separate. We are being torn apart by forced divisions, and the rage, denial and guilt these inspire. There has been a dramatic rise in the past decade of people living in poverty. In California, where poverty is growing faster even than the rest of the nation, one in four children is now growing up poor. Among ethnic minorities, the rates are much higher. In the last 20 years, the poverty rate of young families in the U.S. almost doubled, again with racial/ethnic minority households faring the worst. Nationally, the past decade has brought a decline in the income of all but the richest families in the nation, with especially pro- nounced drops for the poor. The poor became poorer and the rich became richer. More than 27 million Americans over the age of 17 are functionally illiterate. They can't read or write well enough to fill out a job application, write a letter, understand a newspaper or voter pamphlet, or balance a checkbook. African Americans, American Indians and Latinos are disproportionately represented in those numbers. Communities of color, particularly immigrants, remain disen- franchized from the political process. For the 1990 California gubernatorial election, 83 percent of voters were white, 7 percent African American, 7 perce .1 Latino, and 3 percent Asian. Com- pare these percentages to the makeup of California's population: 57 percent white, 7 percent African-American, 26 percent Latino, and 10 percent Asian. This year nearly 1 million youngsters will leave high school without graduating, and most of them will be marginally literate and virtually unemployable. According to the National Alliance of Business, the total life time earnings lost for high school dropouts of one year alone was $228 billion, with an estimated tax loss of $64.8 billion. Their report estimates that in 1986, dropouts cost the economy $147 billion. An estimated 61% of 17 year olds do not demonstrate the reading ability necessary to find, understand and explain relatively complicated information, including material about topics they study in school. Although shrinking slightly in recent years, tremendous gaps in outcomes persist between ethnic groups. African American and Latino students continue to drop out at much higher rates, and to score lower on standardized tests than their white peers. Failure to address diversity and equity is damaging our society. Our quality of life depends on every child succeeding, every child educated, every child embraced. It depends upon developing in our children not only the skills to be productive, but also the skills of understanding, accepting and relating to each other. There is no question, then, that the

6 12 The Unfinished Journey increasing diversity of our peoples, and the economic and social imperatives of our time, require new visions and new ways of schooling, specifically: a high quality curriculum preparing all students for the 21st century and their place in a diverse society, and a commitment once and for all to ending the achievement gaps between racial, linguistic and cultural groups. Luckily, there is a base to build upon. Despite outmoded structures of schooling, despite the fragmentation of the expertise that does exist about how to create schools for a diverse population, and despite the insufficient support inside and outside of schools to make the needed changes there are rumblings within our communities and our schools that pose hope. There are dedicated and creative educators, parents and community members working together to create new curricula and school structures to serve the diverse populations of students. There is a growing research base providing new insights into teaching and learning, and this research is helping to fuel a school reform movement. There is intense public attention on the public schools. Within this framework, a school restructuring reform movement is sweeping the nation. The task facing us is to seize the opportunity to focus this reform movement on the crucial challenge of producing a strong diverse society. We must demand supports and leadership express- ly toward this aim. For the past two years, California Tomorrow's Education for a Diverse Society/School Restructuring Project has visited schools throughout California. We have talked with more than 1,000 teachers, students, parents, administrators, advocates and others involved in the restructuring movement. We have observed classrooms and read all the materials we could lay our hands upon in an attempt to understand, document and capture in writing this latest movement of school reform. Our concern was not with school restructuring in general, although it soon became impossible not to assume that concern. We approached this project with very specific concerns and lenses derived from the following three beliefs.

1. Changing Demographics Require Changes in Schools California's diverse population offers a rare opportunity to create a fair multicultural and multi-ethnic society. Leading the nation in demographic change, California now claims no single ethnic majority group in its schools. Close to one hundred different language groups, dozens of national and cultural groups, and a rainbow of faces are represented in the classrooms of our state. (see chart 1) One ninth of America's children live in California. California's share of the nation's "minority" children is even larger: one in every three Latino children, two in five Asian American children, and one in nine African American children live in the state. "Non-Hispanic whites" comprise a shrinking proportion of the child population. There are nearly 6 million foreign born residents in California, half of them recent immigrants, a trend that is expected to continue. Most come from Mexico, Central America and the Pacific Rim speaking languages other than English, reflecting diverse cultures and national backgrounds, and facing the daunting transition to a wholly new culture and nation.

Introduction 13 7 Approximateiy one-fifth of public school stu- California Schools' Changing Ethnic Makeup dentswere bornin another nation. Close 1967-68 to one out of three are American Indian /Alaskan 0.3%Hispanic 13.6% language minority. The Pacific Islander* 0.1% number of limited Eng- lishproficient (LEM' Black 8.2% students has more than tripled in a decade, and Asian 2.2% the proportion is Filipino* 0.5% increasing yearly. The swiftness and magni- White 75.1% tude of these demographic changes have created new challenges for California and 'estimate for its public sch')ols. Such diversity requires teachers to find new strategies that sup- 1991-92 port children through their Pacific Islander 0.6% transition to a new culture, Black 8.6% language and schooling system. For a teaching force edu- Hispanic 35.3% . cated to work in the schools of Asian 8.0% yesteryear, the diverse new student population raises tremen- Filipino 2.3% dous capacity and training American Indian! imperatives. The broad range Alaskan 0.8% of cultures and life experiences represented by students requires the curriculum to White 44.5% become more inclusive and representativeofthefull human story. This is calling for the development of new Chart 1. materials and technologies to meet the challenge. The structures of our Source: California Department public school system and of our child and family serving public agencies of Education Fact Sheet need to be rethought in order to support all children, youth and families. 1992-1993. But these changes are not easy. As in other eras of peak immigration, demographic ethnic change and economic recession, both *.he best and the worst of our national tendencies arise. In California, immigrants are being formally scapegoated at the highest level for economic woes that were decades in the making. Nationally, many people fear that too much focus on our diversity is in itself divisivethey ask, what will hold us together as a nation? Others, including California Tomorrow, believe that only by rectifying our history of excluding and marginalizing racial, cultural and linguistic minority communities can our nation ever come together. Only by acknowledging the diverse perspectives and by fostering the participation of all our people can our society become inclusive and fair. Schools, meanwhile, are under the magnifying glass as to what role they will assume in providing "social glue" for a diverse society. While some educators have greeted duriographic changes with excitement and

8 14 The Unfinished Journey enormous creativity, others have been openly hostile and resistant to doing anything "extra" for "those" kids. Meanwhile, the great majority of teachers are somewhere in the middle, uncertain or unsupported as to appropriate teaching for diverse students. Given the breadth and implications of our diversity, California's people have a particular responsibility to pave the way for a national response. This fundamentally calls for the development and implementation of multiple resources and strategies, so that all studentsin the richness of all their cultures, languages and racesmay participate fully in schooling and society..

2. Research has Documented Inequalities Rooted in Institutional Structures To address the challenge of educating all students, and of developing the skills of living together in our diverse communities, school reform must be fundamentally concerned about issues of access and equity. Diversity offers enormous benefits to a nation, if its institutions, communities and schools honor that diversity, face its challenges and build from its strengths. Without deliberate efforts to break from a history of discrimination and exclusion, our schools will reproduce the patterns. In the past two decades, research on access to schooling for racial and ethnic "minorities", and for cultural and linguistic "minorities," has produced thorough and disturbing documentation of the structural inequalities in public schooling (please see Bibliography). It has painted a portrait of an educational system that still provides differential access to groups on the basis of language, national origin, culture and race. This body of literature identifies numerous harmful structures in our schools. It documents student grouping practices that segregate and track students (if not by deliberate design, by outcome) by race and language, providing to the disproportionately African American, South- east Asian and Latino lower tracked students a watered down curriculum due to low expectations, along with the least experienced teachers. The result is differential Self-portraits by students access to post-secondary education (see chart in Mary Heeb's art class, 2) and large gaps in rates of school comple- Oceana High School. tion (see chart 3). Clockwise from top: The literature has described thein- Nelson Hurtado, equitable financing formulas that result in Natisa Jimenez, the assignment of racial "minority" and Nejauna Joseph, immigrant children in urban areas to schools Phoebe Malabuyo, Gus Elgarido, that are most often overcrowded, underfi- Hirsonini Shelton. nanced and ill .equipped. It has portrayed the inflexible and lockstep age-grade relation-

Introduction 1i 9 100% Who is Eligible to Go 86 81 to a 4-Year College? 80% 75

60% 58 56

40% 31

20% 14 12 Kindergarten enrollees III 12th grade graduates

0% EliE,ible for Public California Asian White Latino African 4-Year College/University American

Chart 2. ships and expectations of our current school system which cannot Sources: California accommodate immigrant children arriving from other nations' education- Postsecondary Education al systems, often with interrupted schooling. Commission (1990); There is now documentation of the critical shortage of teachers with California Department the language skills and cultural knowledge for teaching children from of Education (1990) diverse, non-European cultures, as well as the exclusionary disciplinary policies and practices that result in disproportionate expulsion and suspension rates for children of racial minority communities. This body of literature convincingly points those truly concerned with California's Dropout Picture: inclusiveness and justice to examinethestructureof Racial Gaps Persist schooling. 40% Blacks 35.7% to 29.4%. Schools must be funda- Number of dropouts down by mentally restructured to 35% 17.6% compared to 1986 rate. address inequities in school experiencesandoutcomes among children of different 30% 0- Hispanics 35.1% to 27.2%. 1986 rate down 22.5%. cultural, linguistic and racial backgrounds, and to assure 25% -s- State Average 25.0% to 18.2%. that all children have access to 1986 rate down 27.2%. qualityeducationalexperi- 20% ences in our public schools. Whites 20.2% to 12.0%. 1986 rate down 40.6%. 15% 3. New Challenges Require

Asians 16.3% to 10.3%. New Thinking About Schools, 10% 1986 rate down 36.8%. and Support for Educators '86 '87 '88 '89 '90 '91 Engaged in that Process Note: This is based on a comparison of 10th and 12th grade enrollment. Beyond the patterns of It does not include dropouts prior to 10th grade, or during 12th grade. exclusion described above, Chart 3. our unprecedented diversity Source: California Department has posed wholly new challenges that demand re-structuring of schools. of Education Fact Sheet Today the majority of teachers are serving students with whom they do 1992-93.

10 16 The Unfinished Journey not share cultures, languages, national backgrounds or communities. Though crucial, approaches for teaching such diverse students remain greatly underdeveloped, as do programs to prepare and train teachers more representative of the students. To build the capacity into schools to meet these challenges requires massive rethinking, new levels of support and new structures. In Califor- nia Tomorrow's work in schc Ils throughout California, we have been soundly informed and deeply moved by many teachers, parents, students, administrators and advocates working to create access within institutions shaped by traditions of exclusion. They have articulated to us the joys and struggles of working for change. We have documented the school experiences of students and teachers who shared neither cultures, languages or national backgrounds, but worked to bridge these gaps. We have come to understand how new some of the challenges are and the uncharted paths that are being forged. And, we came to understand that those working to re-make their schools are driven by a kind of imperative that there is no other alternative. This urgency drives schools to redesign and rethink curriculum, pedagogy and school structure to create schools supportive, appropriate and accessible to the diversity of students. But schools cannot do this without support, and they cannot do it alone. This latest research was undertaken partially to define what kinds of supports they need for the crucial task before them. Educators and communities in our diverse society are struggling to define what is a challenging educational program that addresses the needs and redresses the barriers facing specific populations. The opportunity to restructure schools so that they are excellent and affirming for all students lies before us. Our research found that while a few pioneer schools and communities are attempting to move in this direction, they are struggling and need support; many others, meanwhile, must be encouraged to set out on this challenging road. This is the "unfinished journey" that we present in our report.

"Race" has no biological basis as a category. It is used in this publication not to legitimate the concept of "race", but instead as reference to the reality in our society. We are assigned to one racial group or another based on skin color and are thereby accorded different access, experiences and resources.

2 In this publication, we use the term "limited English proficient" because it is the term that is used by the state in counting and serving this population. However, we are uncomfortable using a term that labels children by their deficiencies. The vast majority of "LEP" students are immigrantsand their needs go far beyond simply learning English. No serious or effective school reform movement can fail to address their broad range of needs: the culture shock of living in a new nation; overcom the ravages of war; the emotional trauma of uprootedness and family separation that is almost inevitably part of the immigration experience; dealing with the gaps in schooling that often result from living in transit and fleeing situations of war and oppression. The label "I.EP" fails to capture this reality. Furthermore, our concerns with how a child's home language enters into their schooling experiences are not reserved for those who are just learning English. By focusing only on "LEP" students, schools fail to address the needs of all language minority students.

1 7 Introduction 11 H P T -1:t 1

SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING: THE PROMISE, THE REALITY

This is a report about restructuring schools. It is documentation of the wonderful possibilities for our society that lie in redesigning schools to be inclusive and appropriate for educating the richly diverse society we have become. It also painfully reveals how the weight of inequality is still manifest in our schools. Amidst the demographic changes sweeping our nation, it is more urgent than ever that we greet ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity with a commitment to creating schools for all students. But the school restructuring movement on the whole in California, as lively and innovative and important as it is, with notable exceptions, will be unable to deliver on this commitment without vigorous policy and supports established to address capacity. The great majority of restructuring schools are hopeful places. There is a strong sense of collective purpose. Staff work incredibly hard in the belief that restructuring can truly make a difference for their students. They are moving towards smaller, more personal units to build stronger adult-student relationships; they are attempting to break down depart- mentalization and enter into more interdisciplinary teaching; they are instituting longer blocks of learning time for certain combined subjects, most often humanities; they are trying more cooperative learning strategies; in the best cases they are reaching out to parents and members of the community to join in the change. And they feel their work is making a difference. Restructuring schools report that fewer students are falling through the cracks. Schools are said to be safer and more focused. Teacher roles are changing in exciting ways through site based management, collaborative teaching and curriculum writing. They are leaving behind the years of working in isolation in their classrooms.

Students and a student teacher at Hawthorne Elementary School, Oakland.

12 18 The Unfinished Journey This is wonderful news. These are the ingredients of a system of real changeand of a system that can once and for all create a schooling system of both excellence and equity. In fact, we were so moved by the To what extent is school work we saw, in spite of the long road still to travel in the areas of diversity and equity, that we felt compelled to document the growing pains restructuring as a policy and gains of the first generation of restructurers to honor their efforts and to inform those who will follow. and reform movement But we did not just document good ideas and good works. Restructuring is a promise and a process still in its early stages. We heard resulting in attention from those in the field, and we saw with our own eyes, the agony of bringing issues of race, culture and language to restructuring discus- to cultural, racial and sionsof confronting the depths of entrenched inequities in our public school system. The reality in most schools is silence when it comes to linguistic diversity? these issues. In private, teachers anguished about the inequities they see being perpetuated in the restructuring process, with key voices left out of the dialogue such as parents, students and instructional aides, and with multicultural programs and language programs neglected or cut to make way for the whole school vision. California Tomorrow would be concerned with restructuring schools, with or without a restructuring movement. But, in fact, there is a restructuring movement, one of the few centers of energy in educational reform in California and the nation. The chief forces motivating this have been the teacher empowerment movement pushing for site based management and professionalism, and the explosion of research about learning and teaching in the schools.

About This Study We took the assignment to find and document attempts to create new models of schooling that would accommodate the needs of a richly diverse population. We looked for what was occuring within the restructuring movement that might speak to our concerns with issues of culture, language and race. Our field research began in Octcher 1991 and lasted into June of 1993. It was designed to answer the followtag questions. What does it look like when schools restructure to better meet the needs of a culturally, racially and linguistically diverse student population? To what extent is school restructuring as a policy and reform movement resulting in attention to cultural, racial and linguistic diversity? To answer these concerns, we developed a two pronged research strategy. A complete description of the project methodology and our full field research guide appear in the appendices. In summary, in-depth telephone interviews were conducted with 33 randomly selected California schools that were engaged in restructuring and that also were known to have diverse student populations. This sample included SB 1274 schools, schools with school-linked services initiatives, and a variety of other restructuring models such as Comer, Coalition for Essential Schools, Accelerated Schools, etc. Eight additional interviews were conducted with schools that had submitted high-scoring planning proposals under the state's SB 1274 restructuring initiative. We also conducted 32 on-site indepth case studies of schools identi-

Scho, )1 Restructuring: The Promise, The Reality 19 13 Location of Schools in the Study Northern California * = Phone Interview School = CaseStudy School

00 00 San Francisco ** Central ** Valley Greater San Francisco Bay Area

Central Coast

Other Southern California

Los Angeles

Case Study Schools n=32 by level: by school enrollment: elementary 14 Under 100 1 middle 8 101-500 4 Phone Interview Schools n=41 high 10 501-1000 10 by level: 1001-2000 11 19 by region: 2000-4000 5 elementary Northern California 3 middle 10 4000+ 1 Greater San Francisco high 12 Bay Area 9 dominant student by region: Central Coast 4 population: Northern California 3 Central Valley 2 Majority White 3 Greater San Francisco Bay Area 7 Greater Los Angels Area 8 Majority Latino 18 Central Coast 6 Other Southern California 6 Majority Asian 1 9 No single majority 10 Central Valley by LEP student population: Greater Los Angeles Area 9 0-20% 6 # of districts: 19 Other Southern California 7 21-50% 13 # of districts: 31 51-70% 9 over 70% 4

14 20 The Unfinished Journey fied through a statewide nomination process and screened by interviews. These schools were selected because we believed their restructuring efforts might be exciting, giving serious and meaningful attention to issues of diversity. At each case study school we observed classes and interviewed principals, counselors, teachers, instructional assistants, parents and students. The schools selected for the overall study ranged from 2% to 100% LEP populations. They included high schools, middle schools and elementary schools in all regions of California. The student populations ranged from wholly Latino, to mixtures of five ethnic groups, to majority white, and from single to multiple language groups. In order to find out to what extent schools are addressing the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse student populations, we needed to be clear about what we should be looking at and for. We needed to define what aspects of the restructuring process and the school program would tell us the most about how the school is responding to issues of culture and language and race. Long thought went into developing our field guide. It was based upon both the literature on effective schools for racial and cultural minorities, and the literature on proven programs for limited English proficient students. Additionally, California Tomorrow is part of the movement of advocacy for students, and our working framework is in great part shaped by membership in and close collaboration with the National Coalition of Advocates for Students. NCAS is a nationwide network of child advocacy organizations that work to improve access to quality public education for children of greatest need those students traditionally ill-served and excluded. Over the past four years, we in NCAS have embraced a common vision and commitment to the public education system, to full student access to a quality program, and to community advocacy as a force in shaping public schools. Ten universal student entitlements came to be called "The Good Common School" vision for elementary education, and also became the framework for an NCAS publication by that name. In an immediate sense, California Tomorrow's restructuring research project was fueled and informed by the NCAS Good Common School vision. In addition to culling the literature, we chose to build our field strategy around our own adaptation of the Good Common School entitlements. Following are nine areas of specific concern we sought to explore: 1. We were concerned with the inclusiveness of the process used to determine the schoolwide vision and to design the program. From the literature, we knew the importance of widespread ownership and involvement, particularly of racial and linguistic minority communities. Therefore. we wanted to know: Whose school is this? What is the governance and decision making process like? Whose voices are heard in the reshaping and running of the school? 2. We were concerned that parent and school relationships be strong, and that schools enjoy a rich interactive relationship with the communities where their students live. Therefore, we wanted to know: What is the nature of home-school relationships, and in what ways is the school active in its students' communities?

School Restructuring: The Promise, The Reality 21 15 di 3. Given the history of segregation and separation, and the history of failure to educate many minority students, we were concerned How are schools with an emphasis both on heterogeneous and integrated grouping as well as on appropriate programs to address the specific needs of restructuring to build particular cultural and linguistic groups. Therefore, we wanted to know: How are students grouped and placed, and what relation- relationships between ship does this have to their particular educational, linguistic, cultural and other needs? What relationship does restructuring have themselves and other to an integration agenda? What kinds of supports are being designed to ensure that all students can participate fully in the core youth and family- academic program? Are multiple, flexible forms of grouping being tried to ensure students access to a high quality core curriculum? serving agencies? 4. We were concerned that the academic program respect and affirm How closely are they the languages and cultures of all students, that it be accessible to all students, and that curriculum be expanded to incorporate the monitoring whether full human story. Therefore, we wanted to know: How was the academic program being designed to provide all students with those services are comprehensible, accessible, culturally supportive curriculum and teaching? culturally appropriate 5. Understanding the diversity of children's educational backgrounds and development, we were concerned that there be a broad variety and accessible to of assessment strategies and maximum flexibility for movement within the program in response to student needs. Therefore, we children and wanted to know: How is student academic progress being assessed? What relationship does that assessment have to move- their families? ment through the program? 6. We were concerned that there be an attempt to provide a broad array of school-linked health and human services to enable children and their families to lead full, healthy lives. These factors greatly affect school participation, and yet schools are unable to meet the needs directly. Therefore, we wanted to know: How are schools restructuring to build relationships between themselves and other youth and family-serving agencies? How closely are they monitoring whether those services are well coordinated, linguistically and culturally appropriate and accessible to children and their families? 7. We were concerned that schools provide a safe, inclusive, democratic forum for adults, children and entire communities to work together to combat forces of racism and separatism in our society. Therefore, we wanted to know: How safe, attractive and appropriate are school facilities? Are schools creating climates that actively combat prejudice, racism and separation? Are they affirmatively connecting students across lines of culture, language and race? 8. We were concerned that teachers have opportunities and resources for reflection, for joint planning, for professional development, and for maximum involvement in shaping the overall school program. Therefore, we wanted to know: How are teachers' jobs and work roles being restructured to create time, opportunity and resources for full professional development to help them meet the challenges of diverse classrooms?

16 22 The Unfinished Journey 9. Given the legacy of inequitable access to education, we were concerned that schools and communities collect appropriate data to inform them of the strengths and weaknesses of the school programs with regards to the experiences of particular groups of students. Therefore, we wanted to know: What kinds of accountability and data systems are schools designing and putting into place to keep tabs of which groups of students are benefiting and which may not be from the educational programs?

What Do Schools Mean By "Restructuring?" While California Tomorrow's vision of restructuring stems from a particular perspective, we knew, and confirmed through our research, that not everyone in the restructuring movement shares this definition. "Restructuring is an interesing term. For me it's having school sites be more autonomous, having teachers give more input, having schools work more autonomously from the district."Teacher, Central Valley

"I'm not sure what you mean by restructuring. We've been restructuring here for years...educationally restructuring. But we don't use that label, and our governance hasn't changed. For us it's less use of texts, less basal readers, less rote learning...more reality based, more activity based, more whole language teaching and learning."Teacher, Bay Area

"Restructuring is supposed to be about seeing us as professionals with knowledge that is valued."Teacher, Los Angeles

"Restructuring is about how kids relate to each otherthat's the key. How they relate to each other and to learning."Principal, San Diego

Restructuring is a word, a reform, an initiative that means many things "Why Restructuring?" to many people. Schools hold vastly Includes both case study and phone interview schools different assessments of what the problem or challenge is that they are Dissatisfaction with Academic Achievement Levels40%* addressing by restructuring, and vast- Teacher Control and Empowerment 33% ly different views of what it means to District or External Mandate Forced Restructuring 28% restructure. For some it has to do with Issues in Students' Lives Prevent Participation 24% the physical reorganization of schools; "Any Change"Something is Needed 20% for others it is a change in gover- Need for Stronger LEP Program 18%** nance. For some, restructuring means Need for Better Safety and Discipline 10% a change in teaching approaches or Excited by Specific New Educational Model or Idea10% curriculum content. For others, Low Student Self Esteem 5% restructuring means a comprehensive rethinking and reorganizing of the * Five schools in the random telephone sample were restructuring to whole school program. There are avoid academic bankruptcy. ** Only five schools (15%) in the random sample said their LEP programs those for whom restructuring is syn- were central to their restructuring. The case study selection purposely onymous with having received state sought schools that made LEP issues central to their restructuring. SB 1274 restructuring funds.

School Restructuring: The Promise, The Reality 23 17 Yet, the various manifestations of restructuring do have some common roots in the teacher movement's fight for site based management and increased professionalism, the legislative and business sector's campaign for educational accountability, and the explosion of new research on teaching and learning. Within California, the influence of these national trends has been great. Many of the efforts to implement site based management on a district wide level are modeled after lessons learned in the school reforms of Dade County, Florida and Rochester, New York, both driven by teachers unions. The principles of restructuring that are being closely followed in California spring from national reform models such as Ted Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools, James Comer's Child Development Project, and others. California has also -rioneered its own leadership and approaches to restructuring. Under former Superintendent of Instruction Bill Honig, the past decade has seen major reform in the development of state curriculum frameworks. These have been accompanied by grade level reform reports: It's Elementary, Caught in the Middle, and Second to Noneall presenting a vision of whole school design. Finally, spurred by the corporate sector's California Business Roundtable on Education, a school reform demonstration project was passed by the California State Legislature providing a statewide framework and resources for demonstration restructuring schools. (For a description of SB 1274, please see page 24).

Restructuring for the Schools in Our Sample Among the schools we studied, some do not even use the term "restructuring", but all have been involved in an intensive school-wide process of dialogue about the mission, purpose and shape of their educational program. Significant differences emerge, though, in what they view as the impetus to make changes in their schools, and in the specific programmatic and structural reforms they design in response. Most schools begin by considering their students and identifying barriers to educating them well. They seek to articulate why change is needed. Whereas many schools have multiple problem orientations in their restructuring, it is helpful to articulate a typology to illustrate the range.

Impetus: Achievement The largest percentage of our schools identified academic achievement as the major impetus for restructuring. For these schools, the problem is defined from the start in explicitly educational terms. "Our kids are not doing very well on tests", "We know we aren't reaching all our kids, that they just aren't learning and so we need to examine how we teach." Improving education for "all" students, largely without focussing on specific ethnic or linguistic groups, is the framework followed. These schools emphasize the educational program, and focus restructuring on changing curriculum and instructional strategies. This may be prodded by low test scores, or a prevailing sense that some students just aren't engaged. As one principal explained:

24 18 The Unfinished Journey "A lot of our teachers knew that no matter how hard they worked, they still weren't reaching a lot of the kids. That was what brought them to consider restructuring."

Impetus: Teacher Empowerment Other schools define the problem as a lack of teacher control over their work and school policy and lack of empowerment. For these schools, it's not a specific educational direction or student needs issue at the heart of restructuring, but rather giving teachers more say in their work environment and tasks. Teacher control may be the explicit goal, or there may be a belief that utilizing teacher expertise in school site decisions will lead to a more responsive educational program. As a teacher at one school explained: "Things can only change if teachers have the power to shape and make those changes. That's why teacher empowerment has to be the heart of restructuring." In such schools, teacher ideas are welcomed. Teachers are encouraged to try things that seem to them promising. Some of these schools support the flowering of dozens of projects and efforts, despite the fact that there may be no sense of cohesion in the school change effort. The emphasis here is often placed upon governance.

Impetus: District or Community Pressure In some cases, the impetus to restructure comes not through a school site assessment, but through external pressures that mandate changes. A district decision may be made to downsize a school due to fiscal problems or population shifts. Or, a district may step in and try to "clean up" a school that has been having tremendous problems, by bringing in new leadership, new teachers, and by mandating restructuring. Further, a district may attempt to respond to some kind of community pressure about the performance of a school or schools. Five of our case study schools were basically reconstituted from scratch, or designed whole-cloth as new schools in response to political or demographic pressures.

Impetus: Social, Emotional, Physical Needs of Students Some restructuring schools perceive the problem to be issues in the lives of the students and their families that are preventing full involvement in school. These schools may try to direct their restructuring towards developing collaborative or school-linked services arrangements with health and mental health agencies, and working within the school to facilitate non-educational support services to students. They emphasize parent education and institute advisories to create more sustained and intimate adult-student contact. They do not generally seem to view the problem as educational. Community human service agencies that join in these collaborations with schools, share the schools' con erns for the health and well-being of children and youthalthough they do not always use the same language such as "non-educational" needs or "support services." Agencies view their charge as promoting health, mental health, job and financial assistance, etc. for children, youth and families. The problem for agencies,

School Restructuring: The Promise, The Reality 2° 19 then, is often framed as one of a fragmented versus a holistic system of health and human services, making it difficult for children, youth and families to access help. Solutions, then, include locating services somewhere such as the school site, reallocating agency resources and staff to that site, and identifying barriers to accessing services.

Impetus: "SomethingAnything" In a number of schools, restructuring is about "trying something anything ". The idea that "something needs to happen here" seems often less focused on what that something will be than upon a general search for what strengths reside within the faculty, or to make any kind of positive breakthroughs where teacher demoralization or school climate is particularly troublesome. Sometimes a principal saw the need to pull a variety of school-wide efforts together in order to spark change. Laura Fong at Paul Revere Elementary in San Francisco described: "Alot of things were being tried at this school, individual teachers went to workshops and came back excited about this program or another. But it was all pretty individual. We needed, I thought, something to pull us together and involve us all in shaping the school. I wasn't sure it mattered what that thing would be, we just had to pull together. I saw it as my job as to offer some possibilities. I had been familiar with computer grants from my work in the Consent Decree district office. So, we applied for and got an Apple grant. That was the start of it at Revere and then we got involved in the Collaboration for Educational Excellence. But what we needed was a starting place."

Impetus:Safety and Discipline Arenas of Restructuring There are those for whom the problem is seen as a matter of safety The majority of schools were engaged in: and discipline. Learning could pro- Creating mechanisms for involving teachers in planning ceed if students came to school, con- and governance centrated, behaved in school-appro- New approaches to teaching and learning priate ways, and weren't distracted New forms of student grouping by a lack of discipline among their Improved parent involvement and home-school relationships peers. These schools often are grappling with gang activity on campus Approximately one-third of the schools were working on: or in the community surrounding New formsof student assessment them. The need to create a protected School-linked human services, collaborativeservices learning environment takes prece- New uses of technology dence over other school issues. New discipline policies and safety mechanisms These schools focus on strategies A few schools were involved in: like creating smaller groups of stu- Rethinking and rewriting curriculum content dents for more personal human Creating stronger, more connected teacher-student and interaction and attention; they student-student relations emphasize the development of Developing stronger bilingual programs school wide assertive discipline, the New forms of school-to-work transition career pathways creation of a sense of stability and Community service programs consistency in the school.

20 26 The Unfinished Journey Impetus: Innovative Models In some cases, restructuring came about because of a specific reform model that sufficiently excited some influential member of a school community who worked hard to ignite interest among others. The focus was less on articulating a problem or need, than on excitement about a new set of ideas. While this clearly does in some ways correspond to a sense of student needs, the articulation of those needs doesn't always seem present. Thus, for example in one case, the Coalition for Essential Schools model was pursued because teachers thought it sounded like a wonderful way to be engaged in teaching.

Impetus: Diversity A few schools spoke of the diversity of the student population, of race, language and culture entering into their impetus for restructuring. Six schools, all with relatively homogeneous language minority student populations, all elementary schools, and all with numerically dominant bilingual teaching staffs, spoke of their LEP programs and the needs of immigrant, migrant and language minority students as central to the impetus to restructure. Two other schools were drawn into restructuring because their LEP programs were so far out of compliance that community pressure was insisting upon some change. Another two elementary schools with mixed language and cultural communities, viewed meeting the needs of that diverse mix as the central focus of their restructuring. Overall, these ten schools approached the needs of language minority students in different ways: by moving to dual language programs, developing uses of technology specifically for language minority students, experimenting with new groupings and pedagogical techniques, and/or emphasizing parent involvement. All focused upon bilingualism, language and culture.

The reasons schools restructure differ, as do the arenas in which they focus their efforts. The schools in our study ranged from those focused on one or two arenas, to those pursuing more than a dozen. These varied and overlapping orientations to restructuring arise from the particular

When one has a great purpose, he will be ready to so anywhere, even the remotestcorners of the earth. Mural at International Studies Confucius Academy, San Francisco.

School Restructuring: The Promise, The Reality 27 21 views and circumstances of each school community. We did not expect to find schools necessarily working on all the areas we had identified as crucial to access for all students. School change is a long and difficult process, even where entire faculties and communities are committed to that change. We knew we would be witnessing a process some areas deeply planned and already well in place, others still dreams. We knew we would be documenting the difficult process of building a cohesive schoolwide vision. We knew the work of addressing diversity and equity is still largely uncharted. So, we did not expect to find any one school working on all of these areas of concern simultaneously. We did not expect to find any school that wasn't facing some real conflicts or barriers to what they were trying to accomplish. We did not expect to find any school that had "arrived". Reflecting on the most inspiring schools we visited, we identified common strengths that seemed to be greatly enhancing their efforts. This led us in turn to create a "wish list" for restructuring schools that might help them in the challenge to become fully inclusive, equitable places of learning for their students:

To engage in lively and respectful dialogue about the needs of students, the needs of society, the kind of educational program and structure that addresses those needs, and the effectiveness of the program in meeting the needs. When members of a school community can talk about the problems, they can begin to change. To fully involve in that dialogue a wide range of voices representing multiple perspectives that together offer the fullest possible knowledge of the students for whom the school is being designed. With multiple perspectives, holistic and appropriate solutions can emerge. To ensure that the dialogue has maximum influence on shaping the school program and upon practice within the school community. Inclusion does not stop with dialogue--it must follow through into action. To garner and create the policies, conditions and resources to support the change process and to make the inclusive dialogue and the programs which flow from it maximally possible. Schools cannot do it alone.

It is our intention to do honor to the work we witnessed in the fieldand to play a role in supporting and nurturing the hard work of reshaping public education to work for all students. In the course of doing the field work, we met many wonderful, risk-taking, dedicated educators and concerned community members. We were awed by the creative hard work, the many hours, the deep thinking, the ambitious new efforts we saw underway in the schools. We hope that our report can honestly portray that work and make it available in some small measure to many others who are hungry for inspiration and ideas. Restructuring can help our educational system to fulfill the promise of a diverse and equitable society. The challenge is to seize the opportunity presented by the current school reform movement, and to focus its

2 28 The Unfinished journey creativity and energy upon addressing the challenges of diversity. And to thereby redirect our nation towards creating a new societyone that is based upon the best of our national tendenciesinclusion, democracy and social justiceand that firmly and finally rejects the worst of our national tendenciesexclusion and racism. Our report is intended to be a wake-up alarm, calling for school reform that speaks directly to the specific needs of racially, linguistically and culturally diverse students. It is designed to be a resource for the field, highlighting the expertise and vision emerging within those cutting- edge restructuring schools that are not ignoring issues of diversity. It seeks to document lessons being learned through trial and error throughout the state so that other school communities may begin their restructuring efforts more fully informed. Our hope is that readers put this report down feeling both inspired and troubled. We hope they will find direction from those architects in the field who are, in the words of one restructuring administrator, Bob Stein, "trying to create a dream with feet, a dream that can walk on the earth."

29 School Restructuring: The Promise, The Reality 23 THE HISTORY OF SB 1274: CALIFORNIA'S SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING INITIATIVE

For many people, the school restructuring movement pronged legislative strategy: 1) a comprehensive bill to in California is almost synonymous with Senate Bill implement major recommendations for reform, and 2) 1274. While school restructuring has many roots, and demonstrations of restructuring that would be funded by indeed there are school restructuring efforts in California SB 1274. Part one, the comprehensive reform bill, failed which both predate and operate wholly outside the rubric passage in the Legislature; part two, SB 1274 creating of SB 1274 (only 38 of the 73 schools we studied had demonstration schools, passed and was left to indepen- received SB 1274 planning grants) nonetheless, the legis- dently lead the way for restructuring in California. lation has deeply shaped the movement in our state. SB The view of SB 1274's sponsors was that funda- 1274 is a model of a state level effort to facilitate major mental change in schools was needed and that sub- school reform. This section, therefore, describes the stantial gains in student learning would take at least history of the initiative: its origins, the legislative delibera- five years. The Roundtable's Education Committee tion and passage, and implementation decisions. viewed the demonstration as a means to test the feasi- bility of large scale systemic school reformhoping that interest in restructuring at the demonstration sites ORIGINS OF SB 1274 would affect a broader group of schools beyond those SB 1274 (Chapter 1556, Statutes of 1990) originated directly participating. in a dialogue about future directions for California's pub- SB 1274 had first been introduced in March of 1989 lic education system among the business community, the by Senator Gary Hart (D., Santa Barbara), the chair of Superintendent of Public Instruction and key legislators. the Senate Education Committee. The California The California Business Roundtable, an organization of Business Roundtable was the most active advocate for the chief executive officers of the 90 largest companies in the bill, both as a single organization and its individual the state, had called for fundamental changes in member companies such as Pacific Bell and the Bank of California education. In 1987 the Business Roundtable America. Business advocacy for the bill was essential for retained Berman Weiler Associates, a Berkeley research its passage. The teachers unions were intially opposed to and policy development firm to assess the status of it because they felt it diverted funds from the base fund- California elementary and secondary education and to ing for schools, but agreed to remain formally neutral. make recommendations to help the schools meet the The Association of California School Administrators challenge of the 21st Century. Underlying the similarly remained neutral. The California School Roundtable's initiative was a belief that future economic Boards Association and the PTA were supporters. prosperity in a global economy requires a top flight edu- There were three major issues during the bill's cation system. The BW Associates report Restructuring progress through the Legislature: the relationship of SB California Education: A Design for Public Education in 1274 to school choice, the size of the demonstration, the 21st Century (1988) proposed changes in six areas: and the inclusion of low performing schools. The expanding preschool for all 4 year olds from poor fam- Roundtable's initial proposal to Senator Hart included ilies, concentrating elementary and secondary educa- interdistrict public school choice in which parents could tion on core academics until grade 10, and initiating send their child to a public school in a nearby district. post grade 10 options for vocational training, college Because the demonstration was initially proposed to preparation and other specialized study; accountability include one quarter of the state's school children, the based on performance; school autonomy, empower- interdistrict public school choice proposal could have ment of parents, teachers and principals, and discre- been tested on a wide scale. Senator Hart was con- tionary budget authority at the school site; moderniz- cerned about equity in choice of schools and whether ing instruction through the use of new technologies; attractive options would be available to all students. multi-tiered teaching system with differentiated roles and While this was being debated, the second issue the salaries; and capitalization on diversity by assuring that size of the demonstration affected the resolution of all students learn English and a foreign language by the choice issue. When the size of the demonstration exit from high school. was reduced, the interdistrict choice proposal became Following release of the report in the Fall of 1988, less feasible and was dropped. there were a series of meetings and consultations among The third issue related to schools with chronically low then Superintendent of Instruction Bill Honig, the staff of test scores. In the bill's final form, the compromise on the the Department of Education, the Business Roundtable low performing schools issue was a designated matrix Education Committee members, and the BW consultants which targeted grants into six categories: urban, rural and to the Business Roundtable. What emerged was a two- suburban districts; and low, medium and high performing

24 30 The Unfinished Journey schools. The bill specified that low performing schools dum encouraged districts to integrate restructuring with would represent a proportionately larger number of Chapter I, Special Education and Bilingual Education. By demonstration schools than high performing schools. the time specific school site planning had begun, the pub- In the end, SB 1274 funded a demonstration in lic face of the initiative had adopted an all students stance, which individual schools would volunteer to restruc- and language referring to the specific needs of particular ture themselves and be eligible to receive planning and populations of students had largely disappeared. demonstration grants. The schools were required to Within the first year of the legislation, a process address four core elements in their restructuring efforts was in motion of encouraging school sites to dream but were encouraged to innovate beyond these. The about whole-school restructuring, and begin to develop minimum elements were: instruction, curriculum and concrete plans based upon new visions for schools. In assessment; post grade 10 options; new roles for teach- May 1991, the first 92 planning grants totalling $6.8 ers and parents in governance; and technology. million were awarded. In June 1992, 140 demonstration grants were awarded. The state appropriated $6.8 million for the 1991 - 92 planning grants, and $13 mil- The Equity Element lion for one half year of the demonstration grants. Six Throughout the debate surrounding the bill, the percent of the appropriation was set aside for support issue of how culturally and linguistically diverse stu- and administration. The Department of Education dents would benefit from the demonstration came up established a field based approach to providing support in several ways. Terms such as "inner city youth", and outreach, establishing a California Center for "disadvantaged youth", and "low performing schools" School Restructuring located at the San Mateo County were used interchangeably in early discussions of the Office of Education. In the summer of 1993, a second bill. No specific references to culture or language center was established at the Los Angeles County Office entered in at that time. The Mexican American Legal of Education. These centers have had far reaching Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) advocated impact on restructuring in the state. Through their amendments to address the specific needs of language regional networks the California Center for School minority youth. Their amendments were accepted, and Restructuring has worked with schools all across the the legislation contains numerous references to the edu- state. cational needs of culturally, ethnically and linguistically While SB 1274 didn't have the resources to fund diverse students, and the need to involve their parents. nearly as many schools as it became clear were anxious Two years after its introduction, SB 1274 went to participate, nonetheless, the initiative had a broad into effect January 1, 1991. After the bill was signed impact on schools in the state. Most of the schools in our into law, the Department of Education communicated study those who eventually received 1274 fundings with school districts about the opportunity to partici- and those who didn't spoke in very positive terms pate in the demonstration. about the productiveness of preparing proposals for the While the legislation itself included explicit mentions SB 1274 competition. A dialogue had begun, seeds of of meeting the needs of cultural and language minority ideas had been planted. Many schools decided to proceed students, and parent outreach specifically to those com- regardless of whether they received SB 1274 funding. munities, the advisory issued to the field included just They turned instead to searches for private foundation one reference to this issue. The reference suggested that grants. They revised their plans to be much less ambi- "opportunities to limited English proficient and non tious. And they did what they could. Without explicit English speaking pupils to become proficient in all resources to support their plans, few have been able to English language skills" could be one of the areas move forward with the kind of progress that SB 1274 schools chose to address in the "curriculum, instruction and other funded schools have made. Nonetheless, and assessment" category. The advisory did not further "school restructuring" is on the map in California address the needs of culturally or linguistically diverse schools. students or call attention to the legislative language The future of the state's restructuring initiative is about involving the parents of LEP students. According still unclear. Given the fiscal crisis in California, will to persons interviewed for this study, the Department's there be continued funding for the demonstration sites? use of the phrases "all students" and "all parents" were Will there be a second generation of restructuring? Or, intended to convey that attention to the needs of a has the coalition of support which finessed the passage diverse student population should be included in the of SB 1274 dissipated, and reform energies been frag- restructuring demonstration. mented into other avenues of trying to move public The lack of explicitness on this issue has proved to education forward? carry a high price, even though a second later memoran-

School Restructuring: The Promise, The Reality 31 25 UST COPYEVULABLI Restructuring is fundamentally about widen- tered, as schools try to make the curriculum more ing the circle of concern about the public relevant to their lives and create teaching approach- schools. Restructuring schools and commu- es where students more actively participate in their nities face the challenge of a broadened dialogue own learning. Community service for students is about the purposes of schools, the desired out- more common, their voices are expressed in a pro- comes for students, and the kind of system needed fusion of student writing and publications, peer to produce those outcomes. This section, "New counseling, cross-age tutoring and conflict manag- Compacts," is about the stakeholders in this new ing all involve students in new responsibilities for evolving system. It is about the new roles and rela- one another and for the overall school climate. tionships that are being forged among teachers, These are significant new roles for students. administrators, public agency personnel, parents However, with a few exceptions, in the schools and community groups concerned about children. we visited students were not present in the restruc- Chapter 2 describes the challenges and barriers turing dialogue, planning or decision making in schools to open up an inclusive dialogue about process. Their involvement remains traditional who students are, what they need, and how in student governments apart from the adult deci- racism, linguicism and power imbalances impact sion-making bodies that control curriculum, their lives and schooling. The chapter is followed school structure and vision. Therefore, while we by a "First Person" interview with Gail Whang, a hoped to see students participating in the larger teacher at Hawthorne Elementary School in Oak- arena of dialogue about the purpose and organiza- land that has over six years worked to create the tion of schools, we simply did not find it. conditions in which dialogue about these explosive Chapter 6 describes what can happen when but important issues can take place among both communities mobilize and claim responsibility for staff and students. their public school system, and the intricate poli- Chapter 3 focuses upon the multitude of new tics of forging "inside/outside" alliances for school roles for teachers in restructuring schools. Restruc- reform between community members and educa- turing is largely a product of the movement for tors. It is followed by a "First Person" with Angela teacherprofessionalismandempowerment. Glover Blackwell, Executive Director of the Urban Indeed, if there is any group of people whose roles Strategies Council. She describes her community's are being massively changed as a result of restruc- broad effort to take responsibility for school turing, it is teachers. reform in Oakland. Chapter 4 examines the new leadership roles, This section concludes with a chapter on governing bodies and power relationships found in restructuring schools whose plans for change restructuring schools. It is followed by a "First Per- include school-linked services for students and son" account with Anastacio Cabral, the principal their families. Inspired by the collaborative services of a restructuring school who describes his personal reform movement that seeks to serve families challenge to he supportive of faculty innovations holistically, these schools are building health and and at the same time accountable to the district. family support centers on site as well as connecting Chapter 5 examines the potentially crucial role with numerous community based organizations to of parents in school change. Despite stated desires offer mental health, legal, parenting, violence pre- for more parent involvement, the amount of par- vention, immigration, literacy and other services to ent presence is seldom sufficient to provide the key families. The chapter discusses the new perspec- perspectives that teachers are often missing about tives these partnerships are revealing to educators, the students, their cultures, languages and unique as well as the need for school-linked services initia- background experiences. The democratic partic:i- tives to be more holistically tied into school pation of parents in schooling decisions rem .ins restructuring plans. either unexplored or resisted in restructuring Throughout this section, themes are echoed schools. about the challenges of redefining roles and peo- Visibly absent in this section on new compacts ple learning to work together as partners in the is a discussion of student voices and roles in best interests of children. Each chapter makes restructuring. This is reflective of a reality in clear the need for policies and training to support schools. Restructuring is in many ways student cen- this evolution. 33 27 'CHAPTER 2

CREATING AN INCLUSIVE DIALOGUE

Most schools embarking on restructuring begin by looking at their students, and by opening a dialogue about how the school might change for their good. Who are the students, what are their individual strengths and needs, and what are the desired outcomes for schooling? The power of the restructuring movement will be based, in fact, on its success or failure to implement educational reforms that accurately assess students' diverse needs and appropriately respond to them. Creat- ing the conditions for inclusive schoolwide dialogue to talk about these issues is critical. This means not only setting aside time for people to sub- stantively meet together, but nurturing a sense of safety and connection for all involved, and trust that putting time into restructuring will truly result in something meaningful for the school and its students. Some schools manage to generate such an atmosphere, but still are found lacking in the ability to talk about pivotal issuesthe toughest issuesrace, language, equity, diversity. It appeared to us that the majority of schools, all of them with culturally, linguistically and racially diverse student populations, were largely blind to the need to address the individual needs and experiences of these students in the restructuring process. LEP students and students of color were often marginalized or invisible in restructuring plans and practices. Also, there was clearly per- plexity and fear at many schools to even talk about the dynamics of race in the lives of students or in the relationships among faculty and staff. But a complete understanding of the lives and needs of children demands an awareness of how culture, race, language and national background greatly affect their school experiences and participation. In Chapter 1 we described the persistent wide gaps in school achievement and completion between students of different racial groups, with African American and Latino students falling way behind their schoolmates. We also discussed how certain schools that address this problem directly have turned these kinds of outcomes around for students of color. Only with the willingness to address the complexities of diversity can reforms hope to turn education around for all students. The process begins with dialogue.

Societal Conflict About Diversity: The Backdrop for Restructuring Schools mirror the larger society's anxiety and withdrawal from facing racism and inequitable opportunities among different cultures, classes and language groups. We found, with inspiring exceptions, that school staff have tremendous difficulty talking about these issues, either due to ignorance of their importance, or fear of their implications. But one way or other, the demographic complexity of the nineties is defined by the diverse experiences of various racial, linguistic and cultural groups. Whether acknowledged within the school system or not, these dimensions are critically operative in the schools. In fact, the swiftness and magnitude of the demographic changes in the schools, coupled with

28 34 The Unfinished Journey the new levels of diversity it has engendered. has become a highly politicized focal point for our nation in general. Fights over English Only Initiatives and national language policy form a backdrop to the intensification of xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. Debates over bilingual education and language policy, and struggles over textbook adoptions and social studies curriculum demonstrate how communities are in tension over what we teach our children. Those clinging to old power structures claim too much focus on diversity is tearing the nation apart. Com- munities of color fight to have their unique perspectives and experiences acknowledged at the center of the curriculum. The anxiety and anger is palpable. Eyes are on the schools to help the nation mediate this identity crisis and educate a new generation. This, then, has become the context for the work of restructuring schoolsa society in open struggle over cultural pluralism, civil rights and diversity, and a schooling system attempting to operate without clarity about its mission or the resources to mount a strong response to the new challenges presented. In California, fifty-eight percent of California's public school students are children of colorfor most of them, racism is a strongly defining factor in their lives. One third are language minority studentscom- ing from homes where English is not the family language. One-fifth are Limited English Proficient, mostly immigrants with their early lives shaped by a different nation and culture. These are overlapping categories: 98% of language minority students are also children of color. The tradition in schools has been that teachers who wish to respond to students in all their diversity do so as an individual choice in the isolation of their own classroomsshaping multicultural curriculum for their own courses. advising ethnic clubs, sponsoring anti-prejudice and human relations activities, and so forth. At the same time, compliance with laws and regulations to protect the educational rights of students of color and limited English proficient students has been the purview of a distinct group of district administrators and program coordinators. Parents have been largely kept outside of this process, and their concerns about equity and appropriateness of curriculum for their children are usually expressed through individual con- frontations with administrators, or through lawsuits. At the school site, it is a profoundly difficult proposition to make whole faculties and whole school communities acknowledge, own and respond to racism, discrimination, barriers to access and inequities.

35 Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 29 Why is the Dialogue about Diversity and Equity Missing? Four-fifths of California's teachers are white. Most do not come to work with firsthand knowledge of the communities and cultures of their students. Most speak only English, so that the great majority of limited English proficient and language minority students are not matched with teachers who speak their primary language. There is a critical shortage of bilingual and Language Development Specialist teachers in California and nationwide. Teacher education programs are far behind the times in provid- Who Are the Teachers? ing teachers with the knowledge Comparison of Student Population and Certificated Staff about second language acquisition, in California Schools about the impact of racism in students' lives, and about the diverse Staff Students cultural backgrounds of the stu- White 80.7% dents in the public schools. 43.4% We found more direct, lively Black 5.9% 8.6% Hispanic 8.5% dialogue and considerationof 36.1% issues of race, culture and language Filipino .7% 2.4% Pacific Islander in schools where prior to restruc- .1% .6% turing, there had been a tradition Asian 3.5% 8.1% .7% of strong bilingual programs or Native American .8% multicultural education and com- Sourer: California Department of Education 199 1 munity embededness. Here, faculty were trained in working 1111111111MNIMIIIII=111V with students of color Shortage of Bilingual Teachers and language minority

800 childrenandfamilies,

131Vietnamese i 34.934 and the administration Students ; !? was knowledgeable and f,) 600 ElCantonese committed to the LEP 21.154 -1i program and communi- -.4 , ties of color. Generally, cal97234°d4 ,:.-., however, it appeared to .z.

:-..-' us that in many schools, °11'10:07"2 peoplewereunaware

Hmong i .. there is a perspec- 0 :II 18.091 ti tive, a knowledge base E that is missing around i ,.. Acttl Teachers Available Ado Teachers Needed Teachers Teachers . -. their table. They do not Available Needed -...', know that they do not Soanisn 655.097 Students I es Note different scales I know. Some schools seemed to recognize the need for dialogue and expertise in this area, but they were not certain where to begin. One principal explained: "We need to develop some base level understandings and training about diversity. Teachers, management, none of us has been trained in these areas, unless they go out on their own and get it. That's why if we don't have a plan for developing the expertise, we won't be able to carry out restructuring. So the first thing is, we need a plan for staff development about our students."

30 The Unfinished Journey Some teachers also spoke of this expertise gap, and the difficulties of facing it as a whole school issue. "It's tough to admit as professionals that pure ignorance plays such an important part in our lives. There are a lot of things that do get put on the back burner for political reasons, particularly in restructuring. We want to deal with something else now, and we can put the ESL kids off to the side a little bit. At my site, they're a smaller portion of the school so they are not so visible or recognized by a lot of the teachers, and we want to present a kind of united front to the community. You know, when you are trying to sell new changes to a community, you don't want it to appear like there is bickering or disagreement among the faculty. "So there is discomfort. No one wants it pointed out that we haven't thought through how ESL kids fit into this whole restructuring. It's like the emperor wearing no clothes. Everyone feels it down deep, but no one says it. At our site, ESL is smaller than the rest of the school and the ESL teacher is a new employee, she doesn't know the ropes. And there is an incredible amount of ignorance. If someone begins to bring it up, it gets brushed aside with, 'We'll cover that after we do the basic restructuring." The depth of the current teaching force's understanding and effectiveness with their students is in great part dependent upon their own pursuit of training and information that will give them connection to and insight into their students' lives. The extent to which teachers actually do this is shaped by many factors: their awareness that differences exist, their sensitivity to what kinds of questions to ask and how to go about finding answers accurately and respectfully, and their knowledge base regarding the pedagogy for effective cross-cultural teaching and learning. Furthermore, all of these factors are shaped within larger contexts. We found in restructuring schools too few teachers involved in this pursuit, and heavy barriers to bringing diversity and equity issues into the school's plans to better serve their students.

Tense and Difficult: Talking about Equity, Power and Racism at School We found in the schools we visited that talking about raceor about differential treatment of students of specific racial and cultural groups was painfully difficult. There is such a profound level of fear prevalent that it stifles the dialogue, leading people of different viewpoints to silence. This atmosphere of fear cuts a number of different ways. Some teachers are afraid of raising questions or comments related to race, language or culture for fear of being labeled ignorant or racist. People are morti- fied of saying the wrong thing, and feel defensive about their intentions and efforts. At the same time, many fear their words will raise defensive reactions from others. One woman had long experience in the intergroup and race relations field prior to taking her current position as principal in a restructuring school. She told us:

Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 37 31 "Issues of race and gender equity are still so volatile in our society. I like to think we've come a long way since the 60's and early integration, but there is still so far to go. I came to this school 1 wanting to take my theoretical orientation about race relations and put it into practice, but I've had to find a way to do it that didn't bombard and frighten teachers. I can't take the direct approach. It just brings out defensiveness and everyone is afraid of being called a racist. So, we don't talk about race issues separate from general issues of overall achievement or overall behavior that is expected. "I looked for teachers who like kids and who could work in this community. But beyond that, I don't push i don't dare. I am hoping that the international perspective in our curriculum is a way to couch diversity issues as positive, and a way in to beginning someday to look at some of our own issues of diversity. But we haven't really gotten there yet. I think it will be a long road. It's just too difficult to bring those issues up." We found that there were different levels of dialogue and consideration of the issues of race, culture and language from school to school. In almost every school there are a few people who are concerned about racial inequities they see and/or aware of failures to adequately address the needs of immigrant and LEP students. These teachers and instructional assistants and administrators spoke openly to us about the difficulty of bringing their concerns into the open to be on the restructuring agenda. In some schools, a small group finds it possible to only talk to each other about their concerns. These teachers who feel connected as advocates for ill-served or marginalized children often report feeling nervous and unsupported about raising these issues, fearful of being viewed as separatist in a profession with strong norms against criticizing the work of peers. Restructuring schools particularly reward team players. Many individuals spoke to us about how it was unsafe to bring up subjects of race and inequity, with comments such as, "You get shut out if you raise these issues". One teacher described a staff development afternoon at his junior high. Three hundred teachers watched a film, "I am Joaquin" (based on the poetry of Corky Gonzalez about Mexican American-Chicano identity). When asked afterwards to talk about how they felt about the movie, there was a deep silence. "It was almost like feeling a glass of water filling up. You didn't know when it would overflow, but you knew it was getting closer and closer. Finally someone stood up and in a very hostile and volatile way said: 'Why should we learn about them?' No one spoke up in support of the film or about why we should learn about 'them.' It wasn't that there was all agreement with the hostile man. It's that the negative ones will speak up. The others feel intimidated and won't say anything. They are afraid to speak up and face the emotional hostility. They don', agree, but they lust don't speak up. They don't know what to say."

32 38 The Unfinished Journey It was a rare school among those restructuring in our sample, in which there was a critical mass of concerned teachers, or the kind of climate and forums and support which allowed intensive examination of issues of race, culture and language as an integral part of restructuring. There is, in short, a silence in schools about precisely the issues our project is concerned about. It is a silence rooted in ignorance, fear and resistance. And it is a silence with hushed voices wanting desperately to talk about the serious and troubling problems and patterns. Privately, a white teacher told us how hurt she was because she felt that another teacher who emphasizes ethnic pride was turning kids against the white staff. Confidentially, a small group of teachers shared their fear that the Latino students were being treated unfair'by other teachers on campus. In hushed voices, African American teachers at another school expressed their bitterness about the axing of an ethnic studies class. What seemed particularly significant to us, was that tl-,:se concerns are generally not made public or brought into the forums of faculty dialogue. The tensions described above precluded the kind of open dialogue which seems so necessary. It appears to be very difficult for a mixed race, mixed culture faculty where the numbers of minority teachers are still smallto discuss openly issues of racism, equity and differential experiences. In some schools, the white and monolingual English speaking staff felt there was no real problem or issue of race, culture or language in the schoolbut in those same schools, the teachers of color or the bilingual teachers would express deep concerns abort what they felt was racism or cultural ignorance or language exclusion within the school. In some schools, a small group of teachers articulated long lists of the changes they felt needed to be made to make the school program accessible and appropriate to their studentsbut we heard from other teachers at the same school that no such problems existed. In the great majority of schools, faculty shared with us that it was difficult to bridge the gap in perceptions and understanding among the faculty. This is particularly true where there is little support or facilitation for that discussion to occur. One of the hardest things for schools to talk openly about is the tension between groups, and about relations with one another. There was considerable tension in almost one fourth of our schools over whether resources are being disproportionately deflected to Latino immigrants at the expense of African Americans. People spoke privately to us about this tension, but said they didn't dare bring it up publicly. This tension was expressed primarily regarding hiring of bilingual faculty and instructional assistants. In some schools, selecting a bilingual teacher meant by default not considering African-American teacher candidates; in others, The School Planning and it meant that monolingual English speaking teachers felt defensive about Management Team at work at their usefulness and role. Where it has resulted in not selecting African Valencia Park Elementary American teachers, it has been particularly explosive. Here again, the School in San Diego

Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 39 33 lack of widespread understanding within one group of faculty about the needs of LEP students, and among the other group about issues of racism in the lives of students, contributed to the tension. In several communities that were changing dramatically from predominantly African American to Latino, the situations became so obvious and potentially explosive among the parents that the schools were in a way forced to deal with them. The schools in these cases began ongoing assessments of the impact of school hiring decisions on both communities, and tried to open communication between the communities. In one, the bilingual program languished considerably while the school restructuring focused instead on areas of joint concern, specifically a collaborative services center at the school sire. In the other, there was in some ways an exacerbation of the African American community's fears that the needs of their children were being swept aside, as a new Latina Principal emphasized the development of a strong bilingual program for the now majority LEP population of the school. This required focusing other areas of the restructuring effort to address explicit concerns of the African American community. Also at this school, the deliberate shift in the makeup and therefore the power of the teaching staff caused anger among some of the more tenured and monolingual English staff members. Issues of older and younger staff, specialty credentials, language policy, and skin color all became inextricably mixed in the resentments that built up over who sat on which committees. The restructuring meetings for months had to focus on processing these issues and coming to agreement about representation on committees of both bilingual and other faculty. Clearly, unity and the trust which allows collaboration is fragile in a newly restructuring school. The process isn't yet really tested, and faculty seem most willing to bring up and take on issues that don't threaten to divide them, or which don't threaten the autonomy of one another's work. The teachers we interviewed seem anxious to find areas of consensus. Bilingual education, the use of primary language instruction, attitudes towards race, immigrants, culture and ethnic experiencedo not fit this category. Furthermore, they bring attention to teachers own identities.

Lack of Common Language Dialogue is made more difficult in schools due to lack of a common language to discuss the issues. The words one person uses to articulate important beliefs are "button-pushers" to others. A teacher calls passionately for building a common ground and another hears it as a desire to squash the richness of cultural diversity. Groups long oppressed feel strongly about the words used to label who they are. White people are surprised to hear new words describing them. The language minefields threaten collective abandonment of the issues.

40 34 The Unfinished Journey "It's hard to sit and hear words like white, male, middle-class tossed around like that is the problem. There are so many assumptions behind that. I'm speaking for myself, but I think for many other teachers also who quietly won't challenge that stuff because it's an uncomfortable conversation. But the diversity of my life experience is as rich as the diversity of anyone else whether it's one of privilege or one of pain. I think teachers become enthusiastic about looking at all different cultures because they can recognize their own diversity that way as well. Anglo may be an offensive term to me. You don't know that, but it may well be. You can't look at my face and know who I am in many ways. I understand we all resort to language which has meaning to us, but to really deal with diversity, we have to understand the richly diverse and complex and multiple layers of each of our experiences, and not use language that pigeonholes." At the very time that inclusive dialogue about a vision of a diverse society is so essential, the common language escapes us. For example, among those working on intergroup relations in schools, some use the language of anti-bias or unlearning racism. Others speak of democratic education or of community building. Still others use the language of conflict resolution or human relations or cross cultural communication. The same words may be used in ways which mask fundamentally different assumptions and approaches, while wholly different vocabulary may be used to describe very similar approaches. "It's not just finding the words, it's finding out whether we mean the same thing by the words we use. It's how people perceive and define the issues. In some schools, the burning question is, "Can't we all get along?" For others it's a matter of racism, class stratification, economic injustice and powerlessness. For some it's very personal concerns such as guilt and fear. For others it's an issue of access and equity, like who's shut out of college. For me it's not simply a matter of all of us getting along. I'm more concerned with issues of powergetting at the underlying social and economic conditions maintained by institutional racism and other forms of structural inequality that undermine true harmony amidst diversity. It's best expressed in the phrase, "If you want peace, work for justice" or simply put, "No justice, no peace." We must begin the dialogue around diversity by first clarifying our issues."-Joyce Germaine Watts, Achievement Council Taking time and building the groundrules for safe dialogue is essential. Building trust, and finding the ways to articulate basic assumption so language is understood must be done.

"All" Students Philosophy Often Masks Needs of Specific Groups of Students Restructuring schools acknowledge diversity in the composition of their students. The preambles of restructuring proposals almost without fail describe the tremendous diversity of the school. However, in the discussion of specific reforms, issues of equity and diversity soon drop out

Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 41 .35 of the picture. We found that reforms are not being considered that focus on specific populations of students with respect to their needs and experiences in school. There has been a radical swing away from programs, policies and reforms aimed at the particular needs of special groups of students, and towards a dominant reform paradigm which uses the words "all" children, heterogeneity and integration, but which appears then to eclipse specific targeted supports. Teachers, parents, community members or students who raise issues of equity for specific racial or linguistic groups within a restructuring dialogue feel they are swimming against this dominant "universal student" paradigm. We found many people who felt that good teaching meant assuming a color blind approach to differences. In many ways, this is an outgrowth of a growing consciousness that racist remarks and stereotyping are wrongleading to the assumption that any noticing and talking about children as members of a race or cultural group, even in an attempt to understand the culture and experiences of a child and family, is also wrong. There is a definite current among educators that it is inappropriate to call attention to racial and cultural difference or risk being labeled racist. The following quotes typify this attitude: "I don't see kids as any race... when someone asks me about the I ethnic makeup of my class, I have to look at the roll book."

"We just see them all as individuals here at our school. We don't I ask about their ethnicity. They are just all our students." This "colorblindness" leads to the design of educational programs assumed appropriate for all students, regardless of language, culture or national background. But this can result in a denial of real, crucial differences. The reality is that individual racial and ethnic groups regularly deal with discriminatory attitudes and practices and face barriers distinct to their membership in that group. They also bring their cultural heritage, which when understood or shared by teachers, can unlock a world of ideas for creating more engaging and responsive educational programs for the students. The language of this reform movement"education for all children"is hard to dispute on the surface. It stems partially from a commitment to ensure access to the same curriculum for all children. So, for example, moves toward heterogeneous groupings with students of mixed age and ability, detracking, etc., are important reforms emerging out of deep concerns for providing equal education and countering longstanding patterns of inequitable student outcomes. But we were troubled that an emphasis on the generic approach appears to lead sometimes to a denigration of effortssuch as ethnic studies, bilingual education, primary language supportwhich address the specific experiences of ethnic groups and meet the needs of specific groups of children. The de p desire to be inclusive, to create heterge- neous groups, comes to be interpreted in implementation in terms that exclude meeting the needs of specific groups. At one school, which advocates full integration of all children into a core program, some teachers were angered at hearing about the availability of Chapter I money to hire a Filipino instructional aide for Fil- ipino students. We heard the following:

36 42 The Unfinished Journey "I'm sick and tired of this. This is precisely why we don't have if GATE classes, because we want to mainstream students and integrate them in heterogeneous groupings. It's against everything we The deep desire to be believe in here." inclusive, to create Those opposed to a generic view of students feel silenced, discounted, or fearful of raising these issues because others view them as blocking heterogeneous groups, reforms, or as somehow introducing divisiveness. Equity in the new reform movement, appears to imply that everyone receives the same treat- comes to be interpreted ment, the same curriculum, the same interventions. The field is apparently viewing ethnic pride activities, acknowledgement of differences, subaggre- in implementation in gating data by race and primary language instruction as divisive and in opposition to their efforts to create inclusiveness and connection. terms that exclude The basic paradigm of colorblindness and generic "all students" language has to be shifted to embrace the particular issues and needs of spe- meeting the needs of cific groups of students. A new paradigm must uphold that quality education for all students requires specific attention to the particular needs specific groups. of sub groups of students. It requires seeing children and youth in the fullness of their experience, which includes their ethnic and racial and cultural and language experiences.

The Legal and Regulatory Context Court cases and federal civil rights law have been instrumental in shaping the degree to which issues of language, culture and race are considered by schools. In those cases where consent decrees have been negotiated, through court orders to repair racial separation and inequities, it has become an explicit mission for the schools to address racial equity, language access and community needs. Although the vast majority of Cali- fornia educators do not have specialized training for working with language minority students, the political and legal regulatory frameworks around LEP students have created a general awareness among educators that lack of English language proficiency is an arena of educational need. This is true even if a school has no teachers with the skills to address language barriers and/or a program that meets the legal requirements for serving the needs of LEP students. But this understanding is steeped in an atmosphere of compliance rather than vision. And it is an unusual school that has embraced these issues out of awareness that race; language and culture are essential factors in the lives of their students. There is no defining legal framework, beyond desegregation court cases, that similarly brings race, ethnicity or culture to the table pro- grammatically in schools, or that provides categorical funds to meet the needs of specific ethnic or racial groups. The lack of this framework, combined with the lack of awareness by educators, creates a gap when restructuring schools set out to create student centered reforms. Where the complexities of race and culture are not being raised, there is strong potential for crucial defining aspects of students' academic and other interrelated needs to be missed. Thus, the unique life experiences of African American students, of Native American students, of second-, third-.c:3.urth- or fifth- generation Latino and Asian students, are much less likely to be subjects of indepth discussion in the educational dialogue

Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 4 3 37 di of restructuring schools. Furthermore, the educational needs of immigrant students and the children of imiaigrants are commonly reduced to Where the complexities one issuelearning Englishignoring many other vastly important needs. Immigrant children, who are also almost always racial minority of race and culture are students, need help with culture shock, with the shift from one nation's schooling system and teaching/learning patterns to another, with over- not being raised, there coming prior schooling gaps, and with legal and economic pressures of immigration. Without the legal framework insisting upon attention to is strong potential for these issues, and without widespread training and commitment to address these needs, leadership becomes ever more essential. A high crucial defining aspects school teacher, one of the key planners in her school, described the role of administrative leadership in institutionalizing equity into their restruc- of students' academic turing effort: and other interrelated "We've really failed to be consistent and stay on this topic. Defi- nitely, the staff development sessions we've had on these issues needs to be missed. have been the most difficult for the staff and the most controversial. But we don't have a commitment by our administrators to really pursue this. There is a core group of teachers really pushing reform, but the whole thing will fail if we don't really address the equity issue. It would really help if it could be a higher priority, but that's not a matter of the written plan, it is a matter of how things are implementedin keeping the numbers in front of us, in keeping the staff development planned and up and running. For us, administrative leadership is really crucial, because the school structure only allows for so much teacher leadership. We've got to have an administrator who agrees on the priority and keeps it happening!"

Inclusive Table If there was one thing we heard again and again during our interviews for this project, it was that communication in a restructuring school defines the process. Who is at the table and who is not? Whose voices are heard and whose are ignored? Who is there with influence and who as a token? Who is leading the dialogue? Who has direct experience and understanding of the students' lives and needs? The answers to these questions have much to do with whether restructuring will lead to better education for all the students within a schoolin all their diversity. Where teachers cannot provide the lens and understanding of the cultural, racial and linguistic dimensions of the lives of their students, particular care must go into ensuring that the voices are present that can speak to these concerns. One of the major efforts within restructuring has been to broaden the voices involved in articulating a school vision, planning new projects and governing the school. Creating a table that is representative, thus, becomes important. One Principal spoke of the high priority he has placed on this single element:

44 38 The Unfinished Journey "Our reality has changed so much, and the pie charts show it. The push has to be to get the multicultural and multiethnic mix into the decision making at my site. That's the start. I feel like I don't know where we are heading all the time, and that's the nature of the restructuring beast in a way. But I know that if I've got the right people on board, if they're at the table and if they're empowered, I can go with that and support that. Just sheer number representation is important as a start." The number of teachers from and connected to the student communities can make a difference. The number of bilingual teachers and ESL or Language Development Specialist teachers on staff also made a difference. In some schools, where the numbers of bilingual students and teachers are the majority, there is no question that these become central issues. The Fourth Street Elementary School in Los Angeles is 99% Lati- no, and has a long tradition of strong bilingual programs. There is a critical mass of people at the school who are knowledgeable and experienced in these issues. They also are part of a long history of teacher participation and union activity that has set a precedent for dialogue among teachers. There was no question that issues of language and culture were going to be central to their restructuring reforms. In most cases, this has meant broadening those functions to involve teachers. All of the schools can boast new extended roles for teachers which are increasing the authority, the opportunity and the reach of their impact. But which teachers end up with clout in the dialogue, and which other voices are included or excluded differs from school to school. People who have the expertise for working with diverse students tend to be excluded from the dialogueeither because they are not invited or their voices are discounted because they have a lower status within the school community. Some voices were missing because of tensions that have historically plagued schools. For example there is often distance and sometimes even hostility between ESL and other departments, or between newly hired bilingual and other teachers. And of course there are many people beyond teachers who must be included in the dialogue of restructuring.

Instructional AidesAn Often Excluded Resource A commonly missing voice in restructuringdialoguesatthe schools we studied was that of Comparison of Certificated Staff, Classified Staff and Instructional Aides, who usually Student Population in California Schools: comprise the most adults of color, or bilingual adults, on a school Certificated Classified campus. I.A.'s and other classified Staff Staff Students staff are more likely than the cer- White 80.7% 58.6% 43.4% tificated staff to live in the school Black 5.9% 12.3% 8.6% community, and more often share Hispanic 8.5% 23.4% 36.1% ethnicity with the students. Filipino .7% 1.6% 2.4% But only five schools out of 73 Pacific Islander .1% .4% .6% had significant participation of Asian 3.5% 2.9% 8.1% instructional aides and classified Native American .7% .9% .8% staff in their restructuring process. Source: California Department of Educatmn 199 3 In many schools, I.A.'s were in no

Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 45 39 way involved. Or, they may have been officially named to committees but in fact they couldn't attend meetings because, as part-timers, they were not paid during those hours. I.A.'s do not enjoy the status of teachers, though they are often the closest link to the communities. Where restructuring is thought of as an extension of teacher professionalism, the view of I.A.'s as "nonprofes- sionals" keeps them outside of the process yet. In many schools, I.A.'s are depended upon to provide the bulk of instruction to LEP students, to serve as the major communication link with language minority families, and to be the advocates for their communities. Thus they have a wealth of expertise and perspective which should inform the restructuring process. However, this is not happening. There are a multitude of reasons why this does need to happen. Chil- dren of color see adults from their cultural groups/communities in sub- servient roles all around them. Schools can help raise children's expectations by having adults like them in important roles and respected by other adults. Where I.A. voices are missing or excluded, a valuable perspective on students is often missing as well. In several schools we studied, where bilingual I.A.'s or I.A.'s of color had been the major link to parents and where their voices were frozen out, this had resulted in major fissures between the faculty and parent body. A Spanish speaking bilingual aide explained: "When I came here several years ago I couldn't speak English either, so I know what it feels like to have ideas and not be able to speak them. Language is a big problem here for the parents. Too many teachers are just unaware of the problems the kids have, and there is no way those teachers can communicate with the parents. The kids have no one at home to help them with their homework. They are caught in the middle, and it is very hard for the parents too. I talk to the parents every day when they come to get their children. And I hear what they are concerned about. I went to the Council to get a parent liaison position, but the teachers felt it wasn't that important. I say to them, you don't know. Parents always come to me and ask what are these report cards? How is my son doing? But the teachers ignore me when I tell them this, and they ignore the parents, too." Mac Dowell Sixth Grade School in San Diego, desirous of creating a strong cohesive school community, was concerned about the disconnect- edness of the part-time hourly positions of the classified staff. Maggie Matthews, Principal, decided to combine classified positions so each person would work full-time at the school-site. Thus, one person might serve multiple roles as the bus supervisor in the morning, the lunch and yard supervisor, a bilingual classroom I.A., and the teacher of an exploratory class. The I.A.'s are shared across classrooms. This strength- ens the relationship between the classified staff and the school, and ensures a group of adults who have multiple perspectives on the students. The classified staff participate fully in the governance committees of the school.

40 46 The Unfinished journey Parent and Community Voices Also Missing Another often missing voice in the dialogue about school change was that of parents. Most restructuring schools speak of the need for parent involvement, and one-half of the schools have developed new formal mechanisms for some kind of parent voice on committees or decision making bodies. However, most often when schools articulated the need for parent involvement, it was in terms of parental support at home for student learning and school participation, or in terms of the need of the school to have a mobilized parent body to fight for the school program, to voluntarily staff enrichment activities or work in the library or drive on field trips. Seldom did we hear schools speak of parent irr-olvement from the view that parents have a vitally important perspective on their children which is necessary for the school to understand. The absence of parent voice is particularly marked among parents who do not speak English and where teachers are unable to speak the home language. Thus, the very parent voices that might add to the knowledge base about issues of language, culture and race in the lives of students are missing. A few schools place a high premium on hiring parents for the classified positions, institutionalizing parent presence on campus and parent awareness of theoverall school program. The voicesofpublic agency staff were involved in almost one-fourth of the case study schools, and one-fifth of the randomly selected sample. The policy and private philanthropic emphasis on a statewide Healthy Start Initiative, on school-linked services and on collaborative servicesisevident in the field. While these voices are shaping a broader understanding among school staff of the non-academic needs of children and youth and families, they are however, seldom integrally tied into the restructuring planning and dialogue.

Schools Need Mechanisms, Skilled Facilitation and Deliberate Forums to Support this Dialogue The success of pursuits to create dialogue about change are deeply influenced by the existence of supportive school structures and relationships. And the search for how to effectively educate children of differing cultures, tongues and races requires not just teachers' own individual professional development and commitment, but new forms of strong support for such teaching.

Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 47 41 Given the difficulty of the dialogue, schools need to have skilled facilitation, shared groundrules for discussion, and time set aside to talk about issues of diversity, equity and power. Yet the vast majority of schools have none of this. Those schools which are grappling deliberately with this problem have had to create their own mechanisms. "We have to find a way to educate teachers and make them comfortable dealing with these issues. They are scared of the rage and violence and anger. They are blind and scared. We're doing an inservice on how to deal with the conflicts that arise about racial perspectives, how to deal with controversial issues that arise in the classroom, how to become comfortable that you are white. We want teachers to be able to articulate their discomfort and feel safe. Then we need to move past that. But when people are frightened, you have to move slowly." Some schools have set aside professional development days and brought in outside consultants to help raise the issues. Others simply see to it that the subject is on their agenda, and use whatever tools the faculty has on its own to help them. One faculty watched movies together as a lead-in to their discussions of race and racism. "We found it necessary to really look at how we look at each other, as a faculty. On the first session, we brought in the videotape The Long Walk Home' with Whoopi Goldberg (about the impact of the Montgomery bus strike on two womenan African American domestic worker and her white employer). We showed the tape and had a discussion, and we kept doing that, with other cultural tapes, so we could get talking about issues of culture and race in our own lives, adult to adult. Then we talked about the parents, because there were a lot of problems with parent perceptions." Some schools have sought to create a sustained, ongoing dialogue among the faculty. Hawthorne Elementary School in Oakland decided as a whole faculty to be trained in TRIBES, a structured process for fostering open and respectful communication. The school has now applied it throughout the curriculum and reports students are fighting less and relating better. Its effectiveness has also contributed to a strong sense of connection among the Hawthorne faculty, establishing a foundation for talking about personal and political issues. This process was by no means easy. (Please see "First Person" with Hawthorne teacher Gail Whang fol owing this chapter about how TRIBES has led the school deep into r,:flection and change.) One third of the restructuring schools we studied work in an ongoing, sustained relationship with coaches or facilitators of some kind. Some are from the corporate world, experts on organizational change who apply that generic understanding to the world of the school site. Others are teacher educators, or experts on specific restructuring models. Some schools work with multiple coaches. Another uses a consultant that helps with communication dynamics. To the degree these consultants bring facilitation experience as well as an "outside" eye, they are found to be very useful in promoting productive dialogue. But seldom are they prepared, versed or able to deal with issues of race and culture.

42 48 The Unfinished Journey In some cases, an outside coach or facilitator can encourage the school to look at certain dynamics, or can present information and data in ways which are less threatening than if they were raised by school site personnel. A few of the schools in the study were involved directly with coaches and consultants whose expertise was in bilingual programs and language minority issues. One facilitator/coach speaks of the power of allowing and supporting people to meet within their own race and ethnic groups. "Being able to talk about these issues on their own is really important. White teachers in bilingual schools feel put down often. The Latino staff will get together and talk about issues of racism, Asians may get together and talk about these things. But if white people get together, there is an assumption that there is something else going on in those discussions. White caucuses that's denied to white teachers and the white community in general, an opportunity to come together and talk about issues of their racial experience in the same way other groups do. It's an extremely helpful strategy to sanction and allow everyone to go to their own corners at some point. Everybody." A staff person of the Achievement Council, which works to facilitate school site reforms, spoke of working with schools over a three year period. "Now, in the third year, they are willing to really talk about these issues of equity. And what they are expressing is that they feel guilt. They feel they are being held responsible, and are being blamed for something, and that they are ignorant of what to do about it. They're owning up to those feelings now. This has been really interesting because in one of the groups, there are some new teachers who weren't part of the original faculty group. And the new ones don't want to talk about the language issues or the ethnic issues. And the original group starts talking about it, putting it out there that they don't know how to serve the kids the best way. It's like their guilt and willingness to admit they need new ways to teach come all together. But it has been three yea rs!"Jean A denika Her colleague, also an Achievement Council facilitator, adds: "After faculties have worked together some, they are able to dis- close more. They've developed some bonds. There's a climate and atmosphere a year beyond. I don't think any school that hasn't been part of restructuring really understands how much turmoil and upheaval is involved. And to throw race in the middle of it, and to wonder whether people are disagreeing because of race, I'm not sure it even makes sense to bring that up in year one of a major change process. But it does have to be put on the agenda. Belief systems have to be looked at. But it is also essential that part of what is looked at is institutional practices."

Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 49 43 Ai Some teachers have found it helpful to do their own personal level professional development on racism and how to battle it. They cite In short, the numerous workshops, consultants and professional development opportunities that have helped them form a personal network and support sys- mainstream school tem outside of their school. However, most of the restructuring coaches, models and national reform discourse, projects don't deal with linguistic minority and racial minority communi- tiesleaving it to the schools to adapt the model to the local communi- the multicultural and ties they serve. But where knowledge about the needs of immigrant and cultural and racial minority students are not present in the consideration equity dialogue, and of the mainstream research and models, or in its interpretation and implementationthe result is usually that the model was applied across the bilingual education the board, or was adapted in ways that resulted in exclusion of LEP students in particular. discussions must be woven together. Role of Advocacy Groups We found cases where outside advocacy organizations took responsi- PI bility for opening critical dialogue to advance school change. In one school, for example, a community group had publicized data on the unequal suspensions of African American students. The Vice Principal described the effect on her faculty: "It came to our attention, it was really forced before us actually, that there was a problem with suspension rates. We took a look at that data, and we began working on discipline approac hes here. I think everyone was glad to. But that came about partly because we had to talk about it. We didn't bring it up, it came from outside... alid I think that actually made it feel safer. I presented the data to the staff and there it was clearlyand so every year we continue to look at suspension rates by ethnic group. But we don't look at other indicators by race. Just suspension." Restructuring schools are largely not tied into a network of resources and support on issues of equity and diversity. It becomes essential, therefore, not only that ESL and bilingual teachers and teachers connected to communities of color play a major role in restructuring design, but also that the research on second language learning and on effective LEP programs, on race and equity in education, become a visible, disseminated, used body of knowledge along with the other mainstream restructuring ideas. Teachers in restructuring schools need to know about this research, and teachers must have access to knowledgeable and inspiring training on issues of language instruction and culture, ethnic and racial issues. This means all teachers, because all are now involved in governance. In short, the mainstream school reform discourse, the multicultural and equity dialogue, and the bilingual education discussions must be woven together.

50 44 The Unfinished Journey "Among the bilingual communitywhich is educated and vigilant about language issuesthe race issue and the class issue are not talked about. That's from the statewide professional organizations to the classroom and to the community. For example, on the status issues associated with skin color and ethnic culture among the Latino population, there is silence. And it's a harmful silence."Joyce Germaine Watts, Achievement Council Ongoing safe dialogue about issues of power inequities with regards to racial, cultural and linguistic groups within a school community is essential if schools are to address the needs of all students. But supports for this must be available beyond the school site. Clearly, in the training and preparation of teachers, administrators, third party change agents and coaches, the skills of facilitating such discussions should be developed. In addition, district and state leadership is needed to put these issues explicitly on the school reform agenda.

On the Need for Policy and Infrastructure People spoke urgently of the need for policy supports which make it explicit that concerns with culture, language, race and gender are to be addressed in reform efforts, and the need for an infrastructure that helps schools to do so. Said one woman from a county office of education: "I think the problem with current state policy reforms is imple- mentationwhether it is 1274 or 1882, or the language arts framework. When the mandates and guidelines don't explicitly involve issue of race and language, they don't get addressed unless there is a person or a policy in place that insists. Our office gets handed the reforms and we're supposed to help the districts implement them. Our office lacks sufficient people with the expertise to make the initiatives work for language minority students. The people who do lead these efforts are very good, very dedicated, very hard workers. They simply don't have the background or expertise to direct and shape the reforms to speak to the populations of students who are in the schools."Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, Los Angeles County Office of Education And another spoke of the power of the science framework as a tool for placing these issues squarely on the school site agenda:

51 Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 45 "The folks who put together the science framework included race and gender standards in a very prominent position. When I starting working with a new group of teachers, I discovered they hadn't really read the framework. They'd heard its basic parameters, but somehow no one had communicated the race and gender part. We got into it together, and they began to read it, and then we had to discuss gender, and we had to discuss race, and we had to discuss language. It surprised them, and they are reluctant to put them into the curriculum now. They are balking. But it gives us a starting place. It helps to have a framework adopted for the whole state that speaks to the issue of all children and makes it clear what all the children means. That it's about everyone becoming scientifically literate, and that there are particular barriers and histories that have excluded certain groups of kids, and so if we really care about scientific literacy for all kids, we have to talk about race and gender and language. It's written policy, right there in black and white print." There is a limit to what an individual school can accomplish in a vacuum. They depend upon active supports, curriculum development and resources beyond their own school site. "One of the things in our school based management plan was to integrate multicultural studies into the school program. We found out about the New Majority Curriculum being developed. It is a really exciting project going on in LA. But then what happens? We say we're going to wait for that. One year goes by, and }'ear two, and this is now the third year we've been waiting. So it's not on our agenda anymore, it's on a back burner. Because who is going to do it? We have to rely on ourselves, and that is tough, really tough, especially when you are talking major curriculum rewriting." We need policies to create the basic conditions to ensure that safe and respectful dialogue occurs about how race, culture, and language affect students' lives and participation in schools. These include: creating time within a school day and year for such dialogue; providing facilities; redesigning job descriptions to encompass involvement in reflection and dialogue; providing adequate trained facilitation; professional development for educators about these issues. At the same time we need policy which explicitly places issues of race, culture and language and diversity squarely on the reform agenda. We did see some schools strongly focused on the specific strengths and needs of their students in their restructuring efforts. These schools tended to use budget discretionary power to create parent liaison and community liaison positions, fund translation mechanisms, increase the multicultural collections in the libraries, create more parent and family responsive services (such as ESL classes and immigration counseling), etc. We saw wonderful family literacprojects, multilingual family centers, active community multicultural and bilingual publishing centers on campus. We saw community cultural events hosted at school sites. We found schools with lively conflict mediation and anti-prejudice curriculum in place.

46 52 The Unfinished Journey Much can be learned from those schools that actively combat inequities in their restructuring and in the broader society. These schools have created ways of facilitating the dialogue. Their respective histories tell different stories about why this has come about. But taken altogether some things clearly make a difference:

It makes a difference who is at the table in explicit termspeople with connections to the students' communities and people with expertise in bilingual education. It makes a difference if schools facilitate dialogue about the specifics of the ethnic, racial and linguistic experiences of the students, in regards to both their strengths and needs. It makes a difference if schools have mechanisms that allow them to look at groups of students through sub-aggregated data in order to identify and address inequities. It makes a difference if schools have access to professional development and research literature on educational and social/cultural issues of specific communities. It makes a difference if there is a richly diverse multi-racial and multi-lingual faculty body. It makes a difference if the school seeks the perspectives of community based organizations that serve other than academic needs of the children and families who are part of the school. It makes a difference if addressing the particular dimensions of culture, language and race are part of the explicit mission and mandate of the school. It makes a difference if the school, the district and the overall restructuring reform paradigm do not view diversity and unity as polar opposite forces, but rather as complementary strengths. It makes a difference if the principal and the instructional leadership of the school fully support the professional development of the faculty in issues of diversity and equity, and continually foster an atmosphere where issues of race, culture, language and national background are addressed at the school.

53 Creating an Inclusive Dialogue 47 Gail Whang

Gail Whang is a fifth-sixth grade bilingual teacher at Hawthorne Elementary School in Oakland, California. She has been a teacher for twenty years, and has been a key force in Hawthorne's efforts to reform curriculum, structure and relationships to focus upon issues of language, culture and race in the lives of their school community. She is also a trainer throughout northern California for TRIBES Through Interactive Learning and a conflict resolution trainer for the Oakland Unified School District. This profile tells the story of Hawthorne's long effort to create a dialogue and focus in the school about multiculturalism. It is written in Gail's words, as a participant and a leader in the process.

BEST COPY AVAILABLE 54 48 The Unfinished Journey A Teacher's Perspective: The Six Year Process of Developing School-wide Dialogue on Multiculturalism at Hawthorne Elementary School in Oakland by Gail Whang

C C n order to understand how our school arrived at a place where we are defining multicultural education, discussing racism and cultural differences, examining bias and stereotypes and developing curriculum reflecting these themes, I have to begin six years ago. At that time we started a conflict resolution program at Hawthorne. It was a response to the stress of teachers dealing with conflicts that seemed to arise all day long. We liked the idea of training students to resolve their own conflicts in a peaceful and positive way while at the same time giving us more time to teach. Student conflict managers went out on the playground to help solve the conflicts of their peers. We saw results immediately. The number of conflicts decreased and teachers expressed tremendous enthusiasm for this program. Students began to express their feelings, took responsibility for problems, and really tried to work through them. What made this program successful was that the teachers believed in it and actively promoted it to the students. The idea of bringing the whole school together to work on a common program was very powerful. So much of teaching is very isolated. It's possible to go into your classroom, close your door, not come out for lunch, and never talk to another teacher all day long. That happens very easily in this profession. Coming together and working on a schoolwide project brought us together as a staff.

Creating a Safe Environment Building on the momentum of the conflict resolution program, Ruth Ichinaga, our school nurse, presented the TRIBES program to our staff.. We viewed the attraction of TRIBES as something we could do to create a safe environment within the classroom and anotherNTay to reduce conflict. arranged for a school in San Jose that had been trained in TRIBES to present at our school, and the staff became very interested. Arlene Graham, our principal, was very enthusiastic and encouraged four of us (Nancy Asher, Ruth Ichinaga, Susan Sperber and myself ) to get trained as trainers. We in turn trained our entire staff in TRIBES. We approached TRIBES primarily as a program for the students. TRIBES emphasizes the importance of creating a caring and supportive environment where students feel safe to share with each other. By reinforcing the norms of No Put Downs, Attentive Listening, Confidentiality, and the Right to Pass, this caring community begins to develop. What students will share an opinion if they get put down or if others laugh at them? While TRIBES does not explicitly teach about racism or prejudice, we feel it must be in place in order to teach about these topics. Frequent- ly in our diverse classrooms, I hear students making fun of another student's pronunciation or racial name calling. When this happens, we can

First Person: Gail Wining 55 49 dd put aside our "curriculum" and seize the moment to teach about cultural differences, stereotyping or prejudice. You can't have Each morning we have a community circle where we share how we are feeling. When the students feel safe, they frequently share their feel- a school-wide ings of anger because of being called a racial name. Once, one of my Laotian students expressed anger because a Latino student called him program with "Chino." Chino means Chinese in Spanish. He exclaimed, "They were making fun of me and besides, I'm not Chinese." Meanwhile, one Mexi- just a one-shot can student spoke up and said that it might not have been a put down. He explained that in his culture, friends sometimes call each other names training. which depict a physical characteristic. "My father calls one friend lapones' because he looks Asian and another friend Panson' because he IP is a little fat." Through this discussion the students learned something about each other's culture. I encourage my students to share their family stories, traditions and special artifacts from their culture. To others from a different culture, these stories may sound "strange" and a typical reaction is to laugh or make fun of the "strange" customs. But in a TRIBES classroom, a real sense of appreciation and curiosity is apparent.

Implementing TRIBES Required Changes Within Teachers Too often exciting programs die a quiet death shortly after what may have been a stimulating training session. It takes time, practice, feedback and discussion with co-workers to effectively implement a new program. Staff development programs rarely include an ongoing plan for implementation. TRIBES emphasizes the importance of teaching both social and cognitive skills. To teach social skills along with all the other areas of curriculum is very different from the way most teachers teach. We soon learned that in order to implement this program effectively, to build community within *he classroom and teach social skills, required changes within the teachers. ,Ve met with teachers and talked about concerns they were having because it required changing the way that we managed the classroom. We were talking about teacher change. Most of the teachers were excited about doing TRIBES school-wide so we all committed to using our staff development days for a whole year to really focus on implementing it. Every month, a day was devoted to follow-up on TRIBES. All other staff development programs were suspended for that year. I think people underestimate how much is involved in making changes and adopting a new program like TRIBES. For the first three months, teachers had trouble getting their classroom TRIBES circles together. To put students in a circle and have them share how they're feeling is a BIG step, not a little step. It meant you had to rearrange fur- niture. You had to have a rug or a way for people to be comfortable. Taking that first step was very difficult. So, when we had a follow up and learned how many teachers were having trouble even starting a circle, we brainstormed together on ways to do it, on different approaches to physically setting up a classroom space, and on how putting students in rows has different implications from putting them in clusters. There was a lot of questioning, sharing ideas, building up confidence and supporting each other. As TRIBES leaders within our faculty, we had to stay in touch with the teachers. We

50 The Unfinished Journey needed to know the pulse of how things were going. We'd check in with id them frequently. In that way we could plan follow-up sessions which were in tune with teachers' needs. We decided upon a goal for ourselves We got beyond griping that within a month, everyone would have tried at least one community circle. about students in the In the midst of Hawthorne's implementation of TRIBES, Jeanne Gibbs, the author of the TRIBES book, was getting feedback from teach- lunchroom and began ers about the difficulties of integrating TRIBES into the overall curriculum. Many of the trainers formed a group to design a new training, talking to each other "TRIBES Through Interactive Learning," that incorporates the Johnson brothers' research on cooperative learning. The four of us from about what we valued Hawthorne got retrained, and then did a retraining for the whole staff. To keep TRIBES fresh, alive and school-wide, we do yearly trainings for and who we are. We the .5 or 6 new teachers who join the faculty. For three days in a row they get released with subs to take part in this. You can't have a school-wide were beginning to program with just a one-shot training. There has to be commitment to train the new teachers. change the culture Conflict Resolution brought people out of their classrooms and together at Hawthorne. TRIBES built on that power. Through the train- of our school. ing, something was happening among the staff. Not only were we involved together in a school wide program, but because of the nature of both trainings, it brought the staff closer. We realized th& people talked more about things that were going on in their personal lives. We got beyond griping about students in the lunchroom and began talking to each other about what we valued and who we are. We were beginning to change the culture of our school. I often wonder why Hawthorne has advanced so far. I think there are key people on the staff who really believe in schoolwide change, and teachers who look beyond the classroom. Many of the teachers implement school wide projects, but would not necessarily take the leadership to initiate such a project. To me, that's been the real key. We have teachers within the school taking that initiative and trying to organize people schoolwide. This takes patience, organizing skills, good listening and vision. We also have an administrator who encourages that leadership and struggles for our ideas at the district level. While there are many teachers who love the programs, the ability to garner everybody's support in the whole school is yet another kind of skill. You need to have people on the staff willing to take that leadership and put in the extra energy to develop schoolwide programs.

Integrating Conflict Resolution and TRIBES Into Our Relationships So, first we had Conflict Resolution, which was followed by TRIBES. Then we started moving into other curriculum areas. Many teachers were experimenting with team teaching and cross-age programs. We implemented an environmental education program for the fifth graders, a camping program for the first graders and an Oceans week which was schoolwide. Coordinating school-wide programs, p^rticularly in a multi- tracked year-round school, is a monumental task, but the feeling that's created by doing it is amazing. It creates a feeling of unity. In the lunchroom or in the halls, you can feel the positive changes that arise as people work on similar curriculum. It has united the primary and upper- grade teachers. 57 First Person: Gail Whang 51 Ai There was something about Conflict Resolution and TRIBES that paved the way for this feeling of unity. We began to use the skills and A very deep kind of content learned, for example using "I" messages and expressing our feelings. In many of my interactions with co-workers, our listening skills sharing was going on have improved. We know how to ask each other to listen when we need to unload after a frustrating day. One teacher was particularly frustrated about who people with an administrative decision and went to our principal, Arlene, and said, "I need to give you an 'I' message." TRIBES gives us a common were, where they came language to use in order to enhance our own communication and relationships. Most teachers supported these ideas and so it really did help from, and what communication and the way that we related to each other. All of this is a backdrop for the multicultural work that we are involved in now. they valued. The TRIBES training is very experiential. The faculty got into TRIBES and went through the activities together. For example, one of 79 the activities is the Life Map, where you have 20 minutes to draw your life and the significant events that have happened in your life. The faculty TRIBES groups were integrated so each had different genders, races, instructional assistants, teachers and administrators. People who might not necessarily relate to each other because of being on different tracks or different grade levels, got to share parts of their lives. For many, this was the first time that they had shared with co-workers. Many commented, "I've been working with somebody for 10 years and I never knew this about them." We have instructional assistants who shared about their life in Laos and Cambodia during the war and how they escaped to Thailand. This is not the kind of thing that we discuss in our busy work day. A very deep kind of sharing was going on about who people were, where they came from, and what they valued. This was significant in getting to know people, looking at how people think and why they think in those ways. It really does increase our sensitivy to each other. TRIBES builds inclusion and creates a comfortable and safe way to talk to each other. When we make decisions and put forth our own values and opinions, we feel comfortable and don't feel like we're going to be judged. At the same time we began to look at schools around the country which were involved in making change. We were inspired by the work of the Coalition of Essential Schools and began to discuss the larger issues about changes going on in today's world and what implications this has for teaching and learning. On a voluntary basis, we started meeting with staff members who were interested in discussing these ideas and talking about change. We read articles. We started talking about changing the way that we had been teaching. We wrote several grants where we created programs based on our new thinking. This process helped us to look critically at and reflect on our own pedagogy.

Creating a Focus: Multicultural Education The school was alive with many exciting programs. We received grants for new technology. Individual teachers were writing and receiving grants for their own creative projects. People were trying new approaches and new curriculum. At the same time, because of so many projects, many teachers became frustrated and overwhelmed. We decided that we needed a clear focus and priority for the school and that a school wide retreat would be an excellent way to achieve this. We made a request for three staff development days from the District. Our request was first

52 58 The Unfinished Journey turned down because they wanted all schools to have the same staff development days which had already been planned. But Arlene was just brilliant about writing up a plan and sending it to the District: "This is what we want to do with our staff development days and please let us know." Eventually she worked it out so we could go ahead. You need to have a leader who's willing to advocate for what we need. Sometimes it means going against what the District has planned. Five of us (the four TRIBES trainers and Charlotte Knox, a 1st grade teacher,) facilitated the retreat which took place in October, 1992. We met several times to plan an agenda and set up cooperative structures where everybody could participate. We wanted to develop a process to hear concerns, create a school wide focus and a plan for implementation. It was important that it was facilitated by uspeople from within Hawthorne who really knew the school and the staff. It was also important that the faculty respected the TRIBES norms, and that we had some history of working together schoolwide. The retreat was two-and-a-half-days. We brainstormed, presented concerns, and met in small groups. There was a whole gamut of things that came out, and we ended up voting on a list of about 10 different areas that we might want to focus on, but it was multicultural education that came out to be the number one priority. Through our discussion on implementation, we formed a committee and over 25 people signed up. One month later, at the first meeting, we consolidated all of the concerns and ideas and organized a structure of four committees and focus areas. One was the Integration of Classes Committee. This was to address the problem of the isolation of students by language groups because we had bilingual classes on a multi-track system that divided the various Asian language students into two tracks and the Spanish speaking students into other tracks. Within their own classes it led to a lot of isolation and racism. Students would call each other names, and the teachers were very concerned about that. We wanted to look at new ways we could group students and/or arrange the tracks so there could be more integration while also maintaining our bilingual program. The second committee, the Staff Awareness Committee, was in charge of creating a plan for developing staff awareness of multicultural issues, and also reviewing and developing anti-bias curriculum. The third committee is curriculum development and Celebrating Multicultural Diversity. The fourth committee, Parent Involvement, wanted to work on creating cross-cultural groups with parents, family picnic potlucks, and parent workshops. We saw all of this as a two-year focus. People could sign up for one or more committees. We created a steering committee with representatives from the four committees. The steering committee would have representation on the school management team so everything that was discussed in these committees would be sure to get back to the management team.

Staff Awareness Committee/School-wide Retreat After the retreat, a lot of different things happened. Candy Boyd, author and teacher education instructor, did a two-hour in-service for us around multicultural literature. We felt like the next step had to focus on staff awareness. Finding a good consultant who could lead such a training was very important. We wanted someone who could involve us

First Person: Gail Whang 51 S3 actively, respect our work and at the same time, raise the important issues. We chose an old friend of mine, Jan Sunoo, who is a labor mediator for a government agency and nationally recognized in the field of multicultural conflict. He had done a lot of cross-cultural mediation with the Korean American and African American communities in Los Ange- les. Since we grew up together in San Francisco and have been friends for a long time I knew his style and his approach, and thought he would be the right person to lead this training for us at Hawthorne. We did a one- day training with the whole staff. In preparation, I worked with him on utilizing the TRIBES principles, so we could build on the language and approach the staff already knew and believed in. This was the agenda: Introductions, Goals and Groundrules (Revisiting the TRIBES Norms) Exploring Ourselves as Group Members A Few Facts on the Changing Population of California Cultural Awareness Inventory The Givens of Culture and Values Stereotypes vs. Group Characteristics Group Characteristics Pertinent to Inter-Ethnic Relations (Communication styles, dealing with conflict, respect, comfort zones) Evaluation An important part of the day was looking at culture, and really thinking about what it is. The whole day was very interactive. People got into groups and shared times that they each had experienced culture shock. We broke up into our own cultural groups. The large group defined what those small groups would be. There was a huge group of White teachers, and they felt it was just too big to have a productive discussion so they broke down into smaller groups, like a Jewish group, and an Irish group. But, again it was something that they defined. Altogether we ended up with an African-Ameri- can group, an Asian American group, a Mexican, Spanish, Latin and Native American group, a Jewish American group, an Irish American group, a Borderline American group, a European American group and a California group. In these groups we looked at ways that we communicate, and how we deal with conflict. We talked about what we respect and value, and the stereotypes that we hate. People loved meeting in these groups. After lunch the whole group met together and shared our discussions with each other. This gave us a rare opportunity to learn about each other's culture and what we value. We also got to state what stereotypes and misconceptions are said about us. This is something that is very difficult for people to share because behind each stereotype is much hurt and anger. All of these sessions took place in an atmosphere of openness and trust. The feedback from this day was very, very positive. The staff wanted to do more. Many began to raise questions about how to apply this to the classroom. This led right into examining racism and bias. What does it look like in the classroom? At what age do you teach this to the students? What are the developmental stages for teaching about racism?

54 n The Unfinished Journey So we began to plan another session in order to look at materials we Ai use with students and to become more critical about the library books and textbooks that we use. One of our teachers made copies of an article People who have that made the key point that multicultural literature about a group should be written by people from that group. We all read that article, never really said and used the jigsaw structure to discuss it. Then there was a discussion about hair, how people talk about hair, and how different groups look at anything for many hair. For example, in some of the Southeast Asian cultures it is impolite to touch somebody's head. We examined books, and analyzed them in years are speaking up. terms of race, gender, age, and class using criteria we had gotten from Nancy Schwindeman's Open Minds Through Equality and Cooperative In a sense the lid has Learning! Cooperative Lives. That was our introduction to looking at our materials in a critical way. The feedback from that session was also been taken off and very positive. A Latina teacher who has been teaching at Hawthorne for many much that has been years shared a personal incident with the staff awareness committee. Last year she saw a co-worker making copies of materials that were very repressed is beginning stereotypical of Mexican Americans and she didn't know how to talk to her about it, even though it made her very angry. She said that since we to be expressed. have been focusing on the issue of multiculturalism, she would now feel comfortable talking to a co-worker if a similar incident arose. PI On the other hand, there are also parts of our growth which aren't so comfortable. Now that we're focusing on these things, there have been charges of racism. People who have never really said anything for many years are speaking up. In a sense the lid has been taken off and much that has been repressed is beginning to be expressed. There are also some teachers who have been saying, "I'm just so scared about being called a racist and I'm afraid to say anything." Or some teachers are saying, "Well, I don't know anything about any of this stuff," and are feeling a little overwhelmed. But this is all a natural process, and it's going to have its moments of discomfort. We have to just keep telling ourselves that that's okay. Meanwhile, we've continued our conflict resolution training for new teachers. One of the new teachers said, "You know, we have ways to solve conflicts among students but what do we do about conflicts among the staff?" She expressed her concerns about the charges of racism. One idea that emerged from this session was that we would train conflict managers among the staff. Eight staff members volunteered to receive conflict mediation training for adults.

Integration of Classes and Students The Integration of Classes Committee proposed several ideas in order to reduce the racism among the students. One was to mix up language groups within the same track to respond to isolation. For instance, on Track A, instead of it being all Cambodian, we put some Spanish speaking classes on the same track. They remained bilingual classrooms, but they were on the same track. That meant that schoolwide activitiPF recesses would be more integrated. This group of teachers could work together. The committee proposed setting up team teaching pairs in the interest of promoting integration of our students. It is team teaching across language groups on a voluntary basis. In order for team teaching to work, you have to feel comfortable with the person that you're team teaching with.

First Person: Gail Whang 61 55 Now we're gathering names of pairs of teachers who want to team teach together for next year. People are using different models of how to team: the mini-course model, the language arts switch, departmentalizing for math, world culture seminars. At any rate, the students would come together and mix within the classrooms. This year I'm team teaching with Sonja Ebel. We both share the same 5/6th grade class. When we combined our classes we had Cambodian, Fijian, African American, Native American, Laotian, Mexican, Vietnamese, and Caucasian students. Our class is like a mini United Nations, and to have so many ethnic groups in the same class together is wonderful. During a TRIBES circle recently, the students said they appreciated being with others from different cultures and learning about each other. They have become very outspoken if they hear racist remarks. They will say, "That's a put-down and I don't like it." Our students are feeling very proud of who they are.

Curriculum Development/Celebrating Multicultural Diversity This committee was in charge of developing thematic units of study and planning assemblies to honor the different cultures present in our school. Susan Neyer, one of the teachers on this committee, had received a grant to purchase books, slides and artifacts from around the world. She purchased, organized and categorized a wealth of materials for us to use for our multicultural units. The committee also developed two curriculum units: "Food Around the World", and "How Do We Define Cul- ture?" Both were presented to the staff and received enthusiastic response.

Parent Involvement Activities One of the ideas that came out of the parent involvement committee was to have the parents come and pick up the report cards from the teacher instead of sending them home with the students. Two teachers decided to try this idea. In one of the classes all but one parent showed up for the report card. This idea was tried in order to increase parent/teacher contact and break down barriers for easier access and communication with the teacher. The idea came as a result of one teacher's desire to get to know the parents of his many Cambodian students better and to find a way to work with them. In July there was an extraordinary event where approximately 400 parents and children, community people, and Hawthorne staff were in attendance. The main focus was the bringing together and the sharing of cultures. This was done by sharing food and presenting music, plays and dances from different ethnic groups performed by students and various community groups. Another focus of the event was to introduce our community to the multitude of health and community resources available to them at Hawthorne and in the immediate neighborhood and other parts of Oakland. To add to the festivities there was face painting, peace tile painting, and "Bumper" the talking police car. This event was planned and coordinated by parents, school personnel, and a community organization. All of this is eery exciting. If we are going to survive as a diverse society we have to develop some new positive models which include lessons learned from the past. This is what keeps me in the teaching profession and what keeps me at Hawthorne. I think we are on the road to doing that. We are trying to create some new models. With racism and anti-

56 62 The Unfi,:ished Journey immigrant sentiment on the rise, it is so important to try to make it work here.

Epilogue After our first year of trying to integrate our tracks to reflect the multicultural student population, we realized that we were faced with new challenges of how to effectively work with our language diverse population. From there we realized it was time to review and assess our bilingual and sheltered English programs. This year we formed a new committee to respond to the needs of our limited English speaking students. We know that one of our goals is to integrate our student population. One concern is how to do this and still support their language needs. The response to this committee was overwhelming. Teachers from all grades and all tracks were eager to get involved. Clearly we were addressing a need that spoke to the concerns of many teachers. The goals for this committee are: share what we are doing in our different classrooms, look at successful models in other schools and districts, and define a vision for bilingual/sheltered English programs at Hawthorne School.

63 First Person: Gail Whang 57 CHAPTER

THE CHANGING ROLE OF TEACHERS

"Bottom line: If you want restructured schools, you're talking about teacher empowerment. If the teachers are turned on, the school is turned on. If teachers are supported and get the green light and have the control to make it all real, then the whole school lights up. You can't do it without teachers driving the car." Tom Ruiz, teacher, International Studies Academy.

/f the school restructuring movement shares any characteristic across the board, it is the empowerment of teachers to have a greater voice in the running of their schools. The following two chapters discuss the new leadership roles teachers are assuming in restructuring schools. The driving belief is that meaningful change will only occur when teachers are at the center of the reforms. To some degree, this belief is related to efforts to "professionalize" the field of teaching. It also acknowledges that teachers are closest to the heart of the teaching/learning interaction and are therefore key to designing and making the reforms work. California Tomorrow's vision of meaningful school reform effort finds crucial the leadership, participation and input of teachers. With their training and day-to-day experience in the classroom, teachers have enormous educational expertise to share as a basis for the serious rethinking of teaching, learning and school organization. Teachers may also bring specific knowledge about the particular children with whom they workessential in a diverse society where generic reforms need to be thoughtfully adapted to the specific cultures, languages and communities of the students. Teachers play a more important role in schools than ever with the context of California's swiftly changing demographics. Many of the challenges of working in classrooms with children of numerous cultures, races, languages and national backgrounds are relatively new to the field of education. There is little codified knowledge about how to teach effectively in this context, and that which has been developed is not reaching enough educators, our research confirmed. Though many teachers have an uneasy sense that the old ways are not working for diverse students, it has been a minority of teachers who are forging new pedagogies and approaches in their day to day work. With important training and support for working in diverse settings, it is teachers who have daily opportunities for potential- lyrethinking schools and developing appropriate models of schooling. Finally, teachers have an essential perspective from the workplace context as to the workability or impossibility of proposed new school structures. 58 The Unfinished Journey I:, a majority of the schools in this study, teacher empowerment or increased teacher involvement in decision making was a major reason given for pursuing school restructuring. Almost every school we studied Along with this was redefining the role of the teacherin order to restructure. Not one school put forth a vision of restructuring that did not incorpoi ate some unprecedented expanded roles for teachers. Restructuring, then, is clearly resulting in a greater impact by teachers on their schools' programs, plans, and prac- responsibility being tices. Their roles have been changed and their voices have been raised far more dramatically than any other players in restructuringfor example, assumed by teachers in parents, students, other school staff or community members. If anything impressed us most strongly as we visited schools through- running their schools, out the state, it was the hated work, vision and commitment of teachers working to change their schools for the better. This incredible level of we found a profound work is associated with the number and nature of teachers' new roles. Yet along with this unprecedented responsibility being assumed by teach- lack of preparation and ers in running their schools, we found a profound lack of preparation and knowledge for the task. In many areas, such as administration, knowledge for the task. finance, developing new curriculum and pedagogy, teachers strongly acknowledged the need for support, information and trainingand they were actively taking advantage of those opportunities that existed to improve in these areas. But we found teachers especially lacking critical skills, research and models to aim their restructuring efforts towards closing gaps of achievement and participation between racial groups and linguistic groups in their schools. The gaps of languages, cultures and backgrounds between themselves and their students, and the lack of specific training on these issues, leaves most faculties without the expertise and understanding to focus their restructuring on these issues. Teachers were not only missing these kinds of skills, but they frequently did not recognize their importance. Similarly, teachers were frequently not sensi- tized to the need to broaden the circle of restructuring dialogue to include parents, community, other school staff and students. Still, the level of determination and professionalism we saw among teachers as they pioneered new roles and schooling practices was remarkable. The next section of this chapter seeks to portray the breadth of these new roles and responsibilities for teachers. The formal governance changes which often accompany their new roles are discussed in the next chapter.

The New Hats Both within their own classrooms and the school campus overall, teachers are filling new and expanded roles. We saw teachers as researchers, teachers as administrators, teachers as trainers and coaches of one another. Teachers as community outreach workers, teachers as advisors and counselors, teachers as grantwriters and public relations spokespersons. Mean- while, in each school, the range and process of defining these roles differs. Still, the foremost quality of teacher empowerment is more than just the litany 2

The Changing RoleofTeachers 65 59 of these expanded rolesit is a pervasive sense of teachers being excited and feeling a sense of ownership of, and responsibility for the entire The foremost quality of school program. For teachers trained and experienced in working in isolated classrooms with little opportunity or encouragement for involve- teacher empowerment ment with colleagues, this is a major change. Notably in a couple of schools, while teachers were assuming new is more than just the roles, they did not express any sense of empowerment. The more usual teacher excitement and empowerment was absent in two schools and litany of these barely present in four others. These cases seemed to stem from lack of enough resources or leadership commitment to make the time, space and expanded rolesit is a support for teacher voice and serious participation in formal and/or informal governance. The very large size of some schools contributed to pervasive sense of weak communications and therefore teacher knowledge and influence. In some cases, recent political and fiscal crises beyond the school site result- teachers being excited ed in tremendous demoralization and polarization of the teaching force. Nonetheless, in large part, changed and changing teacher roles are a hall- and feeling a sense of mark of this era of school reform. Teachers' increased involvement in the planning and running of their ownership of and schools may be divided into the following roles, some wholly new and some merely expended under restructuring: curriculum development; responsibility for the program development; peer support and training; administration, public relations and budgeting; student support; parent and community out- entire school program. reac; and leadership. The first five roles were those most prevalently named by teachers in our study. PP Curriculum Development Changes in the organization of curriculum is a major focus at many restructuring schools. Whether due to the decision to move to interdisciplinary instruction, whole language approaches, or writing-across-the- curriculum, at nearly every school teachers were involved in designing curriculum. At some schools, small groups of teachers, sometimes inspired by their involvement in some kind of professional development, were meeting to share curriculum ideas and develop new units for team- teaching together or interdisciplinary teaching arrangements. Many times their efforts were viewed as a pilot for whole school change. In the majority of case study schools, some team teaching was taking place, but at only a few schools was every teacher a member of a teaching team. Team teaching involves teachers in joint planning, which also appears to require at least some new curriculum development. In many cases the new curriculum development was in tandem with efforts to understand and implement new teaching strategies. A middle school teacher described this process: "Change is hard work. You begin to change in one area, like deciding to team teach, and that draws you into having to agree on themes across the curriculum which sends you scrambling for new materials. I've always tried new things in my teaching, but this is different. The intensity is different. We push each other, we excite each other, we feed each other. I feel now like we could put in 100 hours a week to create the curriculum theme units we want to use." At a few schools, in fact, redesigning the curriculum was a school- wide task, determined by the entire faculty or a representative body. One

60 66 The Unfinished Journey school has a curriculum committee charged with the responsibility to create quarterly themes for the entire school, and to develop a list of essential questions and projects that every teacher is expected to work with in some way.

Program Development Program development is closely related to curriculum development, but it refers to teachers seeking out new instructional strategies, technology, training and projects for their schools. Knowledge-hungry teachers bring back many new ideas to their campuses from conferences, lectures, courses, workshops, visits to other schools and personal research and reading. This exploration is leading to the adaptation of inspired new projects in many schools. In one, a teacher was excited by the conflict resolution approaches she learned about at an Educators for Social Responsibility workshop, and so she convinced her faculty to adopt it as a program for the entire school. The degree to which schools create opportunities for teachers to attend conferences and professional development workshops, and then to share their ideas with the whole faculty, appears to make a big difference in teacher impact upon the overall program. Teachers begin not just to think about what might work in their own classroom, but to think about the needs of the overall school. The choice, then, of these professional development opportunitites becomes crucial to whether and how issues of diversity and equity enter into school restructuring dialogue. There was a wonderful sense of professional liveliness and excitement found at many schools in this study. Patti Castles, a teacher at Madison Elementary School in Stockton, heard about PIP, the Primary Intervention Program grant monies available through the state. It seemed to Castles that PIP might address some of the problems in the lives of students she and other teachers had been grappling with such as depres- sion and hostility. She had never before been the advocate for a program, but her principal and other teachers encouraged her to learn more about it, and eventually to go after district approval and funding: "I did it! I got involved, called the district and I said to myself, `Whoa, I'm rattling chairs'. I was embarrassed but I just kept pushing for it, and we got it going! I had never written a grant before. Now four schools in the district are getting the program. I feel really proud. We can make the difference. " Fellow staff at Castle's school describe her successful sponsorship of the new program as emblematic of their restructuring. At Manchester School, the teachers responded to the growing enrollment of LEP and bilingual students by adding not just the required Eng- lish as a Second Language program, but also a Spanish as a Second Lan- guage program for both the monolingual English speaking students and staff. Thus was born a school-wide focus on both providing primary language support and developing bilingual skills for all members of the school community. Moving an ideathat may have started with one or a few peopleinto an entire school program is frequently referred to by many teachers as among the most exciting, albeit frustrating, aspects of restructuring.

The Changing Role of Teachers 67 61 Peer Support "We have lunchtime meetings and before-school meetings. We get support from each other. Before, we still tried new things, went to workshops, but we did it alone and never got any acknowledgement for it. Now we are applauded by each other, we get tremendous support."Lydia Buted, teacher, Argonne Elementary In school after school, we heard about and observed teachers working and talking together about new classroom and school-wide issues. Peer support and collaboration are clearly hallmarks of restructuring. But while working together was often cited as one of the more exciting parts of restructuring, in practice it is not always easy. Most often, teachers collaborate primarily with others who share their interests and perspectives. Where there are differences in perspectives, faculties have had to sincerely work on learning how to work well together. The pay off, however, is not just in tasks accomplished. Teachers spoke repeatedly about how critical peer support has been in enabling them to persevere in the hard work of changing their own teaching and changing the organization of the school.

Administration, Budgeting and Public Relations With increased and expanded roles in shared decision making, teachers are taking on new administrative tasks. They are dealing with budgets and fundraising, public relations and hiring, and this requires new skills. Teachers spoke with us about the difficulties of learning how to read budget line items, figuring out how to write grants, garnering the courage to push things through at the district level, attempting to write press releases, learning how to design legal hiring processes, and making fiscal projections. These new responsbili- tites have seemed enormous at times. "There were big budget cuts a year ago, and we had to face what we were going to do. We talked for three months about what would have to go. People were pan- icking. We all got training in budgets, we all kept having to look at the big picture. We all had to eventually realize that it wasn't a personal thing. If you talked about cutting back on the library, it wasn't about the librarian and how people feel about her. It's not 'let's get rid of so and so.' It was flat out a money issue and a dilemma and we had to figure out educationally, for the children, what to cut. We had to face it professionally. That's what I mean by thinking globally, becoming professional. We have to take a lot more responsibility. We have to grow up."Rosalind Jackson, Resource Teacher, Valencia Park Elementary School At only a very few schools did teachers have total budget control. But at a number of schools, principals allowed teachers at least advisory input into the spending of discretionary money. At one of the schools where teachers were empowered to influence budget decisions, they entered into a vehement disagreement with both the principal and the instructional aides over

6 7 The Unfinished Journey R whether to maintain existing resource teachers or hire new bilingual paraprofessionals. Mediation, negotiation and compromise became the necessary new skills to handle the dispute, but still in the end, bitterness remained. In learning to work together to take on some of the tasks of runr. a school, many staffs brought in facilitators from the outside, while others relied on leaders from within the faculty. During after-school meetings and weekend retreats, staff honed their skills to listen supportively, criticize constructively, and make decisions collectively by consensus. Teachers told us repeatedly how crucial it was to create a safe and supportive working environment so that all would feel safe enough to raise their voices. They were frank about the difficulty of reaching consensus, the long hours, risk-taking and respect that true democracy demands. "The hardest thing about restructuring is being able to talk to each other, to be open and undefensive, to be able to be out there and say 'this is my point of view'. Because if you don't speak up, the real decisions will be made without you, without reflecting your needs. Last year I would have just sat back and whispered to my friends, 'this is bullshit' if I didn't agree with something going on. This year I just can't. Consensus is hard, but when you're responsible for the school, you don't have a choice." Fran Bruni, Librarian & Teacher, Oceana High School More than ever, teachers represent their schools publicly to share their reform efforts at conferences, meetings and visits to other schools. Also, because of the public's interest in school reform, school faculty have had to learn media strategies. As teachers take on the multiple roles of planning and implementing whole school reform, they have emerged as the leaders and spokespeople for the entire school.

Student Support Work There have always been some teachers who play the role for their students of informal advisor, confidant, role model and facilitator in finding supports needed beyond the classroom. However, not nearly enough students have benefitted from such involved teachers. Teachers who have wished to play this role have seldom had the time or been given the support to play these roles as fully as needed. As a result, many students fall through the cracks, with needs unmet and no one to notice or provide them support. Addressing these unmet needs is one of the focuses of many of the restructuring schools in our studyespecially middle schools. Teachers in many of the restructuring schools we studied are now formally taking on aspects of this role. In approximately one fourth of the secondary schools, "advisory" periods have been added to the school day, with teachers charged with responsibilty for leading these groups. These advisories are used for distributing information to students about activities and support services, for checking in with students about their schoolwork and about issues in their lives, for activities designed to build self-esteem and sense of group cohesiveness, and as opportunities to build a strong relationship between teachers and students. Within the new "house" or "family" set-ups at many schools, a core team of teachers becomes responsible not only for the academic teaching of the students in their "family," but also for handling discipline matters, 6 9 The Changing Role of Teachers 63 parent communications, counseling and referrals. Within this, teachers are supporting and disciplining students in a variety of new ways. Those restructuring schools that had an explicit school-linked services component designed to support students' emotional and physical health sometimes involved teachers in greater student support work. Teachers in these schools are needing to learn referral systems to a host of comprehensive service agencies. Some teachers are involved to a greater degree by participating in developing and negotiating the new and delicate relationships between schools and community agencies. (Please see Chapter 7) These new roles in restructuring schools are not always easy for teachers, even when they strongly believe they are necessary. Some teachers told us they resented these heightened expectations, that teaching needs to remain focused on academics and that it is disruptive to also try to take care of so many of their students' needs. The dialogue then continues about what are appropriate roles for teachers, the priority uses of teacher time, and how to incorporate expanded roles into the same compensated work week.

Parent and Community Outreach Teachers also work on building their schools' relationships with families and other community members. Most often this means that teachers work together on 'parent involvement' committees to design and implement strategies to improve the communication and relationships between home and school. The daily tasks of regular phone calls to students' homes, narrative notes to parents and caregivers, home visits, parent conferences and participation in school study teams are emphasized more than ever. At one school where teachers wanted more community involvement, they first worked within the campus and then went out into the local community to meet with a variety of groups: "We wanted to know what everyone wanted who had an interest in the school and the kids. We held several meetings with diferent constituent groups from our community. We would begin each one by telling people, 'We're thinking about making some changes at our school that will directly benefit the students. What kind of skills or knowledge would you like your children to have when they graduate from our school?' Then we passed out index cards so that people could write down their ideas and limited each card to a single idea. After everyone had written down all of their ideas the cards were placed on a table for everyone to review. Next, ten stickers were passed out to each participant. These stickers were used as votes and could be placed on the cards in any combination. One person could choose to place all of their stickers on one card while another might choose to spread their stickers among several cards. By the end of the process we came out with a set of prioritized outcomes for our studcnts which reflected the thinking of that particular group.

64 70 The Unfinished Journey "We repeated this process with our school board, the teaching staff, our site council, the students and our parents groups. In order to reach other individuals or groups with which we had more limited ties we set up a single question, "what will the classroom of the 21st century look like?" We used this question with the local Grange, the other parents at our school, and the local branch of AT & T, which is one of the largest employers in our district. In all, we got written responses from over 75% of our students' parents. From these we were able to create a list of desired outcomes for our school and our restructuring plan." I Doug Day, Teacher, Manchester Elementary School

Educational Leadership Out of this era of school reform, more and more teachers are being acknowledged for the central educational leadership they are assuming. Some have been key in facilitating team building and are recognized by their peers as the primary visionaries in the shared creation of a school- wide plan. Others act as mentors, trainers and coaches, helping their colleagues develop skills for specific new approaches. At evey site, people talked about one or two or even a dozen of their teaching colleagues as powerful, educational leaders. One teacher gave honor to a senior teacher who is part of her team: "It's awesome working with Terry. She has been at this for years. I learn so much from watching her teach. It feels like heaven to sit in our grade level meetings and get to talk about what's going on in our classrooms and the problems we're having. There is not a 1 university around that could teach me as much as she has." How validated, professional, and recognized teachers felt seemed to impact how high they raised their voices and demanded a major role in planning and carrying out the restructuring going on at their schools. It was with pride that teachers spoke of each other's accomplishments and the sense of being a professional staff. As one teacher described: "This is a creative, energetic, progressive staff. We have such strong, experienced teachers, there is no alternativewe simply I do have site based management." The feeling among these faculty is that professional teachers would not stand for anything less than meaningful involvement. For example, teachers at a San Francisco middle school, feeling empowered by their last principal and by recent new levels of student success, refused to accept the district's plan to choose their next principal for them. They convinced central district administrators to let them select their own principal: "We stonewalled them; there's some people in here who kick *#@!. It was a total faculty response. They're excellent teachers and they know that they are good. We look around at each other, I and we know nothing is going to stop us."

The Changing Role of Teachers 71 65 The Rush of Excitement/The Weight of Exhaustion A high degree of both teacher exhaustion and excitement accompa- nies new roles and responsibilities. Again and again school staff described both conditions. At most schools we found at least a few people who were thrilled with their new found voice, that they were listened to, that they were working on the issues they had always wanted to, that they could dream and then try to implement what's best for kids. At a few schools, the shared decision making processes were functioning well and it meant that more teachers were excited and positive. "I've taught for 24 years, and this is great. You get out on a limb sometimes. But I've really begun to help others, work to bring them out. You see leadership skills blossom in people. It's definitely worth the pain and the time. It is unpaid time, and it shouldn't be like that, but it is still worth it. Many hours each week we each put in unpaid. Everyone takes a turn though. Teaching is a service to humanity, you don't do it for the money." Judy McLaughlin, teacher, Paul Revere Elementary School

"The old forms aren't productive anymore. So we began exploring our own learning styles, collecting books and articles, parents and teachers both. And then bringing them to meetings, 'Hey, did you hear about this?' We assembled a library of materials. We were professionallyrevitalized.It was exciting."Emily Krispowitz, teacher, Argonne Elementary It often appeared as though before restructuring, the teachers had never had the chance to fully explore teaching and learning, at least not in rigorous collaboration. These teachers' words are testimony to the success of the movement to professionalize teaching and also to the level of hard work teachers are willing to engage in, mostly without pay. But the stress, long hours, and obstacles have taken their toll. While it may appear somewhat reiter- ated throughout this publication, we were stunned at how teachers over and over again told us how exhausted they were, how many unpaid hours they were putting in. At those schools demoralized by budget cuts, principal changes, unsuccessful attempts to win SB 1274 money, or just too much work, the exhaustion seemed to have won, to have beaten the campaign to empower teachers at the school site. "Now we're just back to zero. All we can talk about together is the budget cuts. There are union meetings every week now. It's so demoralizing. There just isn't any energy left for making changes. There is only so much to go aroundwe have no common planning time, either, except for the Humanitas teachers who team. All the meetings are after school on our own time. It's just exhausting. Do you wonder why not much is happening?" People talked about how difficult it is to create a high level of teacher involvement in working for restructuring when teachers felt cynical, jaded, exhausted, undervalued. Sometimes they didn't want to keep putting in all the extra unpaid hours, other times they disagreed with the restructuring plan and/or were uncomfortable with the high level of col-

66 72 The Unfinished Journey laboration restructuring often demands. Resistance from staff members was one of the most difficult problems described. Educators described their anger at the low respect teachers had his- Finding ways to torically faced in districts or schools, cited series of disappointments with prior reform promises that were never followed up with the resources or prevent the kind of conditions necessary to make them work. They talked about innovative programs cut out, and an overall sense of hopelessness about the possi- ragged exhaustion we bility of real change. saw and heard about "I had thought a lot more would happen by now. But it has just been a lot of meetings... Now it's all about trying to find more again and again is people to come here to work with certain kids. To relieve us of the problems... But again it is all just talk. I've heard it before critical. Restructuring and I'm sure I'll hear it again. I've been teaching a long time. Nothing changes." efforts are unlikely to Not only does the exhaustion and despair stifle teacher voice and action, it also affects their health, life beyond their job, and well-being in be successful resting general. on the powers of "Trying to do everything at once is part of our problem. We make a long range plan and then feel pressured to do it all sooner. exhausted school staffs. Time is the major resource. Teachers willing to give time to the school, putting in alot of volunteer hours. But for how long can it go on? It takes a toll on family life, we're tired. This year there are some new people on the management team, and that will help."Moyra Contreras, Staff Development Coordinator, Melrose Elementary School

"Our fuses are getting short. We were on a roll in September, felt great, kept doing more and more. The excitement was palpable, the pressure tremendous. We have become increasingly aware that what we want to accomplish will take us down a long road that will be never ending. The faculty is really tired now, and I worry about their health."Lois Jones, Principal, Oceana High School Based on our observations, it is likely that the workand sweat of restructuring a school will always lead to some level of exhaustion. But finding ways to prevent the kind of ragged exhaustion we saw and heard about again and again is critical. Restructuring efforts are unlikely to be successful resting on the powers of exhausted school staffs. There must be pay for extra hours and policies that allow paid sabbaticals or leaves for curriculum development. Not only are the health and lives of teachers and other school staff at stake, but a sustainable movement for restructuring schools is only possible if teachers are willing and able to serve. Restructuring is too deeply dependent on the perspectives, energy and commitment of an involved teaching forcethere must be a strong, stable, sufficiently funded system of public education to sustain teacher involvement in restructuring.

The Changing Role of Teachers 67 4-) 1

The Need for New Expertise The system of support must address y both the need to buy the time and support for educators to plan together and to prepare new curriculum and pedagogies. But it must also speak to preparing teachers with the skills and expertise needed to meet the challenges of their new roles. The stakes are high. The new hats which teachers are assuming means they now have impact beyond their classrooms, on the whole school program. Given this larger responsibility, teachers now need the expertise and perspectives to speak to student needs and issues which extend beyond those they may have encountered in their own single classrooms. A monolingual English speaking teacher of college preparatory and advanced placement history classes now is involved in making decisions which affect a program of career pathways and inclusion of limited English proficient students. A kindergarten teacher now sits on a committee handling conflict resolution and school safety issues as they affect older children. Each person brings their own expertise, but they also confront their own areas of ignorance. The broader school responsibility of teachers will only work if a; a group they have at the dialogue and governing table the range of understandings and expertise that are required to serve all students in the school. Therefore, the composition of the faculty overall, and the make-up of individual working groups must be inclusive of many areas of expertise and understanding. This requires both changes within schools, and changes in the recruitment and hiring of teachers. It is unlikely that the teaching force as now constituted can create the reforms needed unless we redefine empowerment as giving not just decision making authority and not just as allowing teachers to serve in new roles, but fostering the expertise and leadership for sound decision-making and a commitment to including a broad diversity of voices in the process. Professional development is essential. But the training and sup- ply of teachers statewide is far from adequate for producing the teachers we need in this diverse state. Our teaching force in California simply isn't representative enough of the communities of our students, and is still far from having the overall numbers and proportions of teachers available with the skills needed for addressing issues of language, culture and equity. The state has only half the credentialled bilingual teacher pool needed even to staff the existing bilingual classrooms. Most teacher preparation programs are still far from offering the courses and experiences which might adequately prepare all new teachers for meeting the challenges of diverse classrooms and schools. To build the schools needed for a diverse society will require major policy leadership and investment in recruitment, hiring and teacher education.

68 74 The Unfinished Journey CHAPTER 4

LEADERSHIP FOR A RESTRUCTURING SCHOOL: NEW ROLES FOR PRINCIPALS, NEW POWER FOR TEACHERS

"I don't think we could do shared decision making successfully if Lois wasn't the person she is, the human being she is. It's the way she operates. Being Principal is not a power role, she works with us, not over us. She lets us work things through so it really becomes ours."Judy Borelli, teacher, Oceana High School

ne of the most hard-fought victories that has come for teachers in recent years is more decision-making authority at their schools. 0Shared decision making means new dynamics and structures of administration and management. This most often means new leadership power for teachers, with principals in new support and overseeing roles. It is a challenge for all involved to try on and get comfortable with these very new working relationships. Developing the processes for school governance should require the involvement of the entire school community in determining who has the rights and expertise to govern the school, which groups should be a part of the governing system and how they should be represented. Though all of the schools in our study were expanding roles for teachers, very Degree of Influence in School Decision Making few were creating widely inclusive Case Study Schools Sample bodies. Some schools include classified staff in decision-making pro- 100% cesses. Many have token roles for 90% II Teachers parents; a few created mechanisms for meaningful parent involvement 80% Classified Staff and other means of giving weight to I 1 thefamilies and neighborhoods II Parents 70% served by the school. Similarly, student participation in decision mak- 60% ing was mostly token. Overall, our

50% 47 research found that at this stage of the restructuring movement, roles of

40% 38 decision-making and governance are 1 34 mainly being redistributed among 30% principalsandfacultyineach school. 20% For schools that designed whole new governance systems as part of 10% restructuring, it was usually a major

1 0 0% and immediate task early in the Decision 'flaking Advisory roleNo or very little effort. In some schools, governing power andlor andlor some influence major influence influence power for teachers started with control of faculty meetings: 75 70 The Unfinished Journey "Staff meetings were a drag before. We'd have long meetings, strictly informational. No one wanted to come. We taught all day if and were exhausted and had had it. The principal, courageously At this stage of and graciously I think, gave us the faculty meeting to make it our own. We're an experienced teaching staff here, but we don't the restructuring know if we will be able to really accomplish what we want to do. Even little things, like not having training to run staff meetings movement, roles of there is a lot of building of relationships we have to do. We took turns facilitating and planning the agenda. That was a start for decision-making and us. We grew from there." governance are mainly Every case study school had some new formal vehicle for supporting and broadening teacher input, but it had typically been a struggle to being redistributed identify truly workable mechanisms. The majority had some kind of centralized overseeing council or group. The various titles included: Man- among principals agement Team, Staff Roundtable, Site Based Management Council, Aca- demic Council, Community Council, Leadership Team and Key Planners. and faculty in Most of these centralized management teams are made up of only teachers and administrators. Some include meaningful roles for classified staff, each school. and fewer include parents, community members, students or district staff people. At Artesia High, the Key Planners group serves as the information and coordinating body, in which decisions are made by consensus, though much of the significant planning work is done in committees. Alianza Elementary School has a parent/school community council with very strong advisory capacity and influence with the principal. Another mechanism nearly all the schools employ for involving teachers in restructuring is committees. At least three quarters of those we visited had some number of "committees," "teams" or "focus groups" addressing a variety of issues. Their purposes generally fell in the following areas: administrative tasks, schoolwide issues or themes, and programmatic work. These committees' titles were also quite varied, such as: curriculum, technology, budget, hiring, physical plant or facilities, restructuring or SB 1274, parent outreach, literacy, bilingual, cultural or multicultural, freshman focus, schcduling, quality of life, structure of learning, articulation, school plan, staff meetings, evaluation (school- wide) and assessment (individual). While formal school decisions tend to be made by the main governance bodies, a great deal of the hard work of planning restructuring happens in these committees. Most of the schools in our sample had struggled hard to create a committee structure that was both feasible and efficient. Many recalled lessons of having created elaborate structures with numerous committees, only to find either that the committees never got off the ground, or that people had to go to so many meetings they were burned out and unable to accomplish goals. Other schools had difficulty getting all staff to buy-in to the vision and proposed changes, and participate in committees. Almost everyone talked about how hard it is to find the

Leadership for a Restructuring School: New Roles for Primiciip Is, New Power for Teachers 71 id time to meet within their committees. Schools that ensured time for committee meetings within their shortened day plans found that this was one The problem of how good solution to that problem. Three quarters of the schools we visited made it a practice for teach- to build a school-wide ers to meet regularly. For schools in which faculty were divided into families, houses or teams, their regularly scheduled meetings provided an consensus and vision is opportunity for all teachers to respond to those issues currently being considered by the main management group. An effective structure was a new one for schools. having one member of each family represented on the management team. Traditionally, the From Core to Whole School Involvement overall mission has Many of the schools worked to make their governance systems facilitate the inclusion of the whole staff, in order to create a vision and pro- been shaped largely gram supported by all the teachers. Central to this task was the challenge of moving from a group of individual educators, each with their own by the administration. teaching philosophy and style, to a whole school reform effort. Almost all schools we studied began restructuring with a small core of excited, committed peoplesometimes these were administrators, sometimes teachers, sometimes parentswho faced the problem of building out from that core. Almost every school also had some people who were interested but not convinced, and still others who were cynical or resistant to changes. Ideally, the core had to find a way to draw in the ideas, commitment and energy of an entire school community. At the very least, the core had to find ways to overcome the resistance of those who might undermine the restructuring effort. In school after school, we heard about the problem of buy-in. For some schools, this meant the willingness of a majority of the faculty to vote to move forward, even if they weren't gung ho or willing to put much energy into the plan. For other schools, buy-in meant strong consensus on a shared vision and an agreement to put time and energy into actualizing that vision. As one teacher declared passionately: "I'm sorry. It's just not okay to have some teachers just sit back and watch. They can be a good teacher somewhere else doing their own thing, but not here, not at a restructuring school. Change takes risk taking, and it takes engagement and it takes energy. You have to be willing to be part of it. And this school just won't move forward unless everyone is willing to give their all." But the problem of how to build a school-wide consensus and vision is a new one for schools. Traditionally, the overall mission has been shaped largely by the administration of the school. How then do schools move from traditional structures to a collaborative process? There are definite elements identified by our sample schools: creating the time and conditions in which dialogue and joint planning can occur; sharing ideas and igniting enthusiasm; developing the expertise to implement new ideas; and demonstrating the effectiveness of new ways of doing things. But the most important element we observed was building trust that change is possible and that people are open to each other's ideas, along with developing the skills of working together.

72 77 The Unfinished Journey Building Trust in Each Other Most schools enter into restructuring with the legacy of a history. Only five schools were founded or reconstituted from the ground up with wholly new faculty. Most, therefore, had a history of faculty divisions, traditions in which one department or group of faculty were viewed as favored by the administration, climates in which innovations were encouraged or discouraged, experiences in which faculty risk taking was applauded or punished. For some teachers a history of frustrations and cynicism prevent their trusting that this reform will actually change anything. For other teachers, there may be hope that restructuring holds promise, but the lack of a track record of smooth faculty working relationships creates resistance to engaging with each other in dialogue. The challenges of facing and understanding each other's differences is large for school staffs. Essential to moving to total school buy-in is including all teachers in the dialogue and decision making about restructuring. We found a number of patterns which prevented this broad cho- rus of voices having influence on restructuring. As faculty members re-configure the structures at their schools, they do so amid both old and new patterns of power and authority. In one school, the Math Department was all powerful and the English Depart- ment had hardly any clout. In quite a number of schools, it was the ESL and bilingual teachers who were marginalized. In one school the veteran teachers yielded little space to the young teachers; in another, the Princi- pal's inner circle was made up only of young, change-oriented teachers. At some schools, those who had always enjoyed power continued to do so within the restructuring process: I "A big issue here is cronyism. An inner circle of chosen teachers. 1 Minority teachers don't belong to it. We have no power." At another school some of the veteran teachers were in a conflict with the principal and instructional aides. Though these teachers had exercised some degree of authority for many years, they were currently fighting hard for total decision making power based on their belief that they best assessed the school's hiring needs. The instructional aides, mostly people of color and closer in background to the students, talked to us about how shut out of the entire process. they felt. During a staff development day, one instructional aide told us: "We're here today but do you see anyone talking? It's like teachers know everything. I don't know why they have these ideas of us as inferior. We open our mouths, but no one is listening." At other schools, it was the ESL teachers who felt silenced. In schools with relatively small LEP student populations, the bilingual and ESL teachers often spoke of feeling marginalized, and were sometimes completely left out of the restructuring process. Either because they are more recently hired, because their students are not considered a significant part of the school, or because their programs have less prestige, the perspectives of these teachers in many schools were largely left out of the process. At one high school, a teacher lamented:

Leadership for a Restructuring School: New Roles for Principals, New Power for Teachers 73 "There is no one from the ESL department that sits on the Lead- ership Council. We have no sense of how restructuring works, especially for ESL students. ESL is like a school within a school... Restructuring is affecting the department in that our budget has to be approved by the Council now. But we're not at the table." This lack of connection is one of the factors that results in restructuring plans that are not appropriate or do not take into consideration the needs of LEP students. It illustrates the results of the lack of certain expertise in the teaching force at individual schools and overall. One of the fundamental problems confronting a restructuring school is how to break these old relationship patterns and ensure more equitable access to the dialogue table and to the power to influence the school program. To overcome these problems, schools need to purposely examine their power relationships and institute strategies for evening the field. Many people in restructuring schools spoke of the importance of helping teachers get to know each other better and to develop a sense of community. Some schools are approaching this task with deliberate efforts such as community building activities as part of each faculty meeting, team building sessions at staff retreats, and other opportunities to engage in activities which help staff to build more meaningful relationships. Both Frank Paul Elementary in Salinas and Hawthorne Ele- mentary in Oakland have involved the whole faculty in the TRIBES process. (please see Gail Whang's "First Person") Some schools also have potluck dinners every payday or other social activities for staff to have some time to unwind and have fun together.

Developing the Skills of Working Together Though emphasizing trust building was central to a school staff's ability to move forward, in addition there are many collaboration and decision making skills that school staff had to learn. While most express tremendous excitement and pleasure about new working relationships, we heard again and again that learning to work collectively involved hard work in learning new skills. Initially faculties need to collectively develop the basic ground rules of working together. Most schools develop a shared vision as they begin their restructuring efforts. This involves collectively deciding on goals and capturing it all in writing. As described in chapter 3, the list of their new roles is long and includes curriculum development, design of assessment tools, and team teaching. Teachers and other staff are working together on both instructional and administrative tasks. Doing any of this is in itself a challenge; working collaboratively on 4.: these tasks requires strong skills in group process. Generally, the schools in our sample that were moving fastest had discovered the importance of facilitation, media- A tion and conflict resolution skills, and were open to pulling in outside consul-

74 The Unfinished Journey incT rnPY AVAII ARI F 7Q tants when a "third party" was necessary. When time and energy is spent learning how to work collectively, usually with outside consultants, the pay off is large. Schools that spent the time and money to learn and develop agreements on meeting format, consensus decision making, etc. displayed greater faculty buy-in and a sense of teacher community and empowerment. This is not to downplay how intense and difficult working together in the restructuring process can be. Teachers care deeply about their new ideas, and are exhausted from the long hours they put in to realize them. At Virginia Rocca Barton Elementary School, teachers give themselves and each other permission to make mistakes and set limits on how much extra time they can give: "One of the things we've had to learn is to recognize peoples' legitimate needs to take care of themselves, to set limits, to be able to say no and not be seen as a shirker. We've worked hard on that. On trying to understand the conditions of each other's lives. Who has small kids and what that means in terms of getting home for dinner, that kind of thing. We've tried to make it okay for each person to take care of themselves." At a middle school in San Francisco, a psychologist is on-site as a resource to faculty membersto both consult about students and also to serve as a kind of "family therapist" and organizational consultant to help the faculty work together. The majority of our interviewees said retreats for the staff were absolutely essentialto achieve space and time away from school, with a stretch of hours or even days for dialogue and connection. But even these retreats are not easy. As one Principal told us: "This is a painful week for the school. We're about to have a retreat to talk about next year's restructuring. These retreats are the most painful and most intense. People express their frustrations, there are tears, and some people even find it necessary to leave the room for periods of time. We try to really take a hard look at how things are going and that means really critiquing our work. This is not an easy ship to be on." Working well together also means acknowledging and understanding one another's differencesin points of view, reactions to change, ways of thinking and communicating, and backgrounds. The processes of restructuring require a kind of involvement that some people are simply unable to do. Teachers who are also parents of young children, students in graduate school, or those working two jobs find it difficult to commit the extra hours for meetings, reading, curriculum development, joint planning and research that participation in restructuring seems to demand. To some it seems these teachers opt not to be involved; from their own perspective it is life's circumstances that prevent their full participation in restructuring. Taken altogether, these examples of differential involvement result in the absence of key perspectives in the restructuring effort. Within schools, efforts can be made to ensure more balanced and inclusive composition of working groups. Faculties can seek the professional development needed to know how to address issues of language, culture and diversity. so

Leadership for a Restructuring School: New Roles for Principals, New Power for Teachers 75 Contributing to differential involvement of school faculty in restructuring working groups is the personal conflict which exists for many staff members about the use of their own time. They are torn between spending time on schoolwide administrative and governance concerns and concentrating on classroom issues, which often seem to be more immediately related to educating their students. "We do all the scheduling for our own students. We like having that control, but it takes time. There is a lot of parent conferenc- ing. No one else can do that for you. Shared decision making means meetings. And we always feel the need for more professional development. Yet, we need to find a way to lessen the demands on teachers. We keep wondering if there is a way to work differently. Is there some way to give back some of the administrative tasks? Is there some way to give over some of the decision making? We can explore ways to provide release time, but there is such a fundamental conflict of interest between wanting time in the classroom which is our basic love and responsibility, and the demands of changing and running a school!"Sandy Ca lvo, teacher, Horace Mann Middle School Principals, too, were concerned by the amount of time spent in meetings: "It often ends up that site based management schools tend to spend hours haggling over the tedious administrative issues and never get around to the real issues which are instruction and curriculum. Really, isn't it a waste of teachers' time to decide by committee about the janitorial schedule?"Principal, Los Angeles elementary school Many people were also concerned about efficiency. Despite a commitment to using consensus decision making in committees, people sometimes felt the process got bogged down and that decisions went unmade or were significantly delayed. In these cases, there were those who believed it was still important to keep hammering until consensus could be arrived upon, while others felt it would just be more efficient if one person were the leader and decision maker of the school. At the few schools which were essentially teacher-run, some people worried that there was no longer any person with the charge to oversee the entire school: "We don't have a governing body to ensure that responsibilities are taken on by everybody. If we had the resources to hire an administrator and still keep the student ratios down, I might be willing to give up those responsibilities. Since generally a small group takes on administrative responsibility, I don't always feel tied to what goes on. We don't have a process for evaluating each other or expressing when we don't feel something is appropriate. don't feel I can do that. I'm not in charge, I don't have the big picture. It just doesn't feel appropriate."Cindy Feeney, teacher, O'Farrell Middle School

81 76 The Unfinished Journey The Principal-Teacher Relationship and the Degree of Teacher Empowerment The degree of Every restructuring school develops its own unique relationships between the principal and the teachers involved in the changing gover- decision making nance structures. The degree of decision making power principals allow to teachers and others, and the actual mechanisms for decision making power principals differ widely, however. Some principals have maintained a somewhat traditional authoritarian role, albeit with measures for advisory input from allow to teachers teachers. Others have become wholly teacher or committee run, with the Principal serving as a facilitator and supporter. And there are many vari- and others, and the ations in between. Some were merely advisory, called upon only as the principal saw fit, while others had the power to make nearly all the deci- actual mechanisms sions for the school, with the principal participating as an equal peer member of the decision making body. for decision making, "We are a shared decision making school. Everything has to go through the management team. My role is that of fac itator. I sit differ widely. as a member of the management team, one who knows a lot of the ropes, is a liaison to the central office, provides a school wide PP perspective, and makes sure things get done."Delia Ruiz, principal, Melrose Elementary Melrose Elementary is one of only a handful of schools we visited where the principal offered responsibility for virtually all important school level issues to the teachers. Only three of the schools we visited had a governance system in which the principal turned over the majority of the decisions to the staff and participated in the leadership committee as a peer. There were schools where teachers were deeply involved as committee members, staff leaders and advisors to the Principal, and yet the Prin- cipal made it clear that the school was not run by shared decision-making. Here, it was the role of the administrator to make final decisions, but within a structure that provided for a great deal of input that was sincerely weighed. Two teachers at one such school explained: "We really are restructuring, but we don't have a formal site based management system here. The principal has whatever authority she elects. She has budget authority for sure, the staff doesn't have a clear sense of the financial end of things. We don't know how much is spent on aides, on staff development. There just isn't an emphasis on governance here. There is an emphasis instead on teacher time for collaboration, for joint planning. It's the teaching that excites us. Managing this school is a major undertakingwe have over 100 people working here, over 1300 kids! This is a city, bigger than some places in Idaho. I'm not sure a school can be totally site based decision making in this kind of situation. The principal wants it to be as open as possible in input, but she has the final say. But she allows leadership to emerge, to blossom, and she respects that. So we know we have power." In such cases, a faculty can still significantly impact a program. Con- versely, the existence of formal governance structures, such as designation as a site based management (SBM) school, does not in and of itself

Leadership for a Restructuring School: New Roles for Principals, New Power for Teachers 77 r*9 ensure teachers strongly influence school plans and decisions. For example, one of the schools where we found teachers had little or no power was an official SBM school. Violence in the neighborhood, poor communications within the school, a negative relationship with the district, low overall morale, and weak leadership from the administration created a situation in which teachers felt little sense of power to make any difference in the future of their school. While a teachers sat on a governance council, the pervasive cliidate was one of profound disempower- ment and even disengagement. If a site based management structure is not insurance for teacher influence, then what are the factors that hinder or help? Certainly collegial support and unity that comes from developing a vision together are major factors. But equally important is the degree of administrative support at the district leve and school site. Teacher associations and unions across the state (and nation) have been primary fighters to win a place for greater teacher involvement in schools. Through both teacher training and contract negotiations, unions have won spaces on governing councils for teachers, the rights of a faculty body to hire the site administrator, and have helped to create a climate in which teacher empowerment is seriously considered. Unions are facing a kind of double bind in some cases. While they are trying to encourage the idea of teachers as professionals, they also seek to safeguard the protections they have won for the teaching force with regards to working conditions. Unions seesaw in redefining their own roles in this movement that is requiring teachers to take on expanded roles, and that is to date dependent on the voluntary hours teachers put in above and beyond their normal duties. As a result. some teachers in some districts view their unions as the major support for site based management and teacher empowerment, and other teachers in other districts view unions as a major roadblock to reforms. One frustrated teacher explained the dynamics in her district: "A truly restructured governance would never fly here. The biggest threat is to the Association's power. They're afraid if we give a little, then the district will expect things from us without pay. The union doesn't want to give up any power to the school district. Between the two, they don't want to give up any decision making power to the teachers." Overall, the principal was the most frequently cited factor in determining how much input teachers had into plans and decisions at the school sites. Over and over again teachers talked about their principals and how they were central to the degree of teacher involvement in decision making.

78 UST COPY MINEABLE 83 The Unfinished Journey "Our principal works hard to get teachers more involved. It's in what he says, does and how he is with the kids. He's not like my old principal who believed in site based decision making only if What kind of you came to !pis decision. With Nate we just talk and talk until we're ready to vote. And the vote is for real."Charlotte West, leadership is needed teacher, Madison Elementary School from the principal? "I think it requires a very secure.principal to do this: Anyone can run a meeting or step in and decide something. But once teachers Does it differ from are allowed to try things, can fail and get support, can succeed and get recognition, we realize our power and it unleashes what is needed at tremendous energy. The decentralized budget was essential in that it put the money in the hands of departments, of teachers, and non-restructuring clearly stated that we were trusted. It takes a special Principal to schools? allow that."Pam Branch, teacher, Artesia High School

PrincipalsPaving the Way for New Leaders So what is a principal's job in a restructuring school? What kind of leadership is needed from the principal? Does it differ from what is needed at non-restructuring schools? What qualities of leadership are associated with teacher empowerment? Overall in restructuring schools, we saw many different variations of models of Principals and personalitiesfrom holders of the vision, light- ing the fire, articulating and instilling the dream, to authoritarian leaders, to the Principal who was servant to the plan owned by the teachers. Alex Yusem came to Artesia High School over ten years ago as a "fix-it kind of principal, a take-charge kind of guy". He found a faculty with a lot of leadership and professionalism, and, to his credit, he capitalized on it. But his basic authoritarian manner remained. "There's my authoritarian role. I try to strategize with people and remove barriers and obstructions. Sometimes they are bureau- cratic barriers, sometimes they are human. I am definitely not a facilitator. I leave that up to others. Initially my role was to create an organization people feel they can function within and which responds to what I am hearing from them. I am also definitely not an evaluator of teachers. They are the instructional leadership for the school. I have to monitor a large corporate institution hereI deal with legal actions and obstructionseverything from being sure people don't trip over tree roots, to halting fights, to working on public relations, to getting the resources we need, to spending hours at the district level trying to maneuver the fiscal and political and educational needs that have to he meshed. But there is absolutely no questionthe buck stops here." Still, there are certain critical needs that nearly all restructuring school communities hope that their principals will fulfill. These were raised either in the negative"we wish we had a Principal that " or in the positive"we are lucky because our Principal does...." Overall, the following are features that restructuring schools find they need from a Principal: 84 Leadership for a Restructuring School: New Roles for Principals, New Power for Teachers 79 Bringing in program ideas and research literature. Schools look to their principal to take responsibility for keeping an "ear to the field" of education for new models and approaches. Many schools said they were sparked by programs and literature brought in by the Principal. We would add to this responsibility the feeding of ideas and research on issues of language, culture and race. Serving as a buffer between the school and the district, and at times the school and the community. Supportive principals are expected to run interference for their school's reform effortdeal- ing with politics, fighting for the school's right to try new programs, seeking waivers, blocking outside pressures on the faculty, negotiating with concerned parents. Anastacio Cabral, Principal at Frank Paul School, is known by his staff as "willing to go t.) the mat" for them. Seeking some joint planning time, the faculty decided to use lunch hours to meet while staffing the school yard with parents. The district insisted that teachers needed to be present on yard duty. Cabral fought on behalf of his teachers, negotiating a compromise solution: parents could staff yard duty with walkie talkies to communicate with teachers in their meeting room when necessary. Keeping an eye on legal guidelines and the education code to inform committees and teachers about what is allowable, what is not, and where waivers may be needed. Encouraging brainstorming as well as creating a climate that supports problem examination. Setting a tone that makes it all right to raise controversial or difficult issues about inequities and power differences. o Mediating / Cheer leading the collaborative process. In a restructuring school, teachers., parents, community people, etc. learn to work together for the first time as they carry on the work so central to the reform effort. Many principals spoke of their role of keeping these teams going in spite of differences and stumbling blocks, meliating between individuals as needed and cheerleading at all times. Keeping the pulse / being key communicator by fostering open dialogue throughout the school. As reform efforts become decentralized within a school, it becomes imperative that each part be informed about the work of the others, for political reasons and to ensure that everyone feels connected to the "whole" process. In most schools, this is viewed as a crucial responsibility of the principal. Schools with poor communication, where it seemed to some that there were secrets or that only a small group was "in the know," faced resistance and other difficulties in their restructuring efforts. At the secondary level, this becomes more importantand more difficultbecause of the largeness of schools and the depart- mentalization of faculties. Nurturing leadership and professional development. Supportive principals not only pave the way for others to take on new authority and other roles within the school, but they provide training for

80 The Unfinished Journey RR this. Particularly in dealing with the budget, the principal of a restructuring school needs to be an educatorsharing the expertise of managing the school. Finding the resources to support reform efforts. While at some schools committees or individual faculty members write grants, it is by and large falling to the principals to scout, lobby and scramble for resources to fund the school change effort. Many teachers spoke of the importance of being able to feel confident that when an idea is raised, the Principal won't say "No, that's impossible," but instead, "Let's figure out how to make that possible." Developing faculty. Principals have played a significant reform- shaping role in the great majority our case study schools through their hiring practices. This includes recruiting and hiring teachers who are change-oriented and risk-takers, or who have experience and commitment to the kinds of changes desired at the school. This also includes principal's diplomacy in "counseling out" teachers who are not strong in the particular restructuring effort. Role modeling. In many schools that are moving ahead, the principal has become a role model of hard work and commitment and as someone who listens and responds non-defensively. Many teachers and parents spoke of the principal who "practically sleeps at the school," or the principal who digs right in and sweeps up the campus.One Principal used her sick days to buy staff development time for some teachers, and this became a symbol for the whole school about how serious she was about supporting their efforts. Close instructional ties. In some schools, the Principal as an instructional leader was crucially impor- i tantin others, this leadership canie s from individual or core groups of faculty. In either case, the closer contact the Principal had with the classrooms, the better teachers seemed to feel about the kind of support and leadership they were getting. Public relations. Particularly in schools trying new things, many mentioned the importance of knowing how to use the media to get positive attention. While teachers now also help fill this role, they look to the principal to ensure the school is well represented overall. Principals work to inspire and reward teachers and committees through recognition, and also to inform the community of the "good things" going on. "As a principal, you must be computer literate, and you must be a good lobbyist and know how to interact with the media. Those last two are what keeps you alive." Yvonne Chan, principal, Vaughn Street Elementary 86 Leadership for a Restructuring School: New Roles for Principals, New Power for Teachers 81 The role of operationalizer for principals is major in restructuring if schools. The giant leap of putting into policy and procedure things Turnover of that have been decided by committee is often left to the principal. Many people spoke of all the minute details necessary to pull off Principals can be any change in school restructuring, from revising master schedules, to clearing requirements with the district, to notifying custodians devastating to of new procedures, to being sure supplies are in place for a new program. With teachers' busy iri their cla.siboriris, it falls to-the- a restructuring administration to be sure that decisions actually get implemented. This is both a mechanics role and a monitoring role. effort. Some of these principals' roles become more salic.t at particular stages. For example, early on in restructuring in many schools, it appears If very important for the principal to set the tone that what is important to the teachers and community will be heard and concentrate on building trust and credibility. The Principal listens, creator of forums where dialogue about issues can occur, and sets a general tone of open shared examination of school issues. As schools develop a sense of cohesion and shared vision, many schools speak of the Principal's role shifting to one of strengthening teachers and supporting them in their professional development, being a motivator and creating new structures and mechanisms for collaborative projects and problem solving. Then, these schools say, the important thing is to get out of the way of excited and motivated committees and teachers and become an enabler, the center of communication that holds the pieces together, assuring th- resources and support necessary for implementation. In almost all restructuring schools, authority is being negotiated and renegotiated between Principals and school staff constantly. The specific personality and politics of a Principal indelibly shapes the process. Arlene Graham, principal at Hawthorne Elementary School, says she plays a variety of roles: "With the outside world, I'm very aggressive. Not many turn me down. That's how I have been able to protect this process. If someone stands in my way, I find a way around them. I just don't hesitate. I go for what we need, and usually they say okay. I do a lot of heavy recruiting from the colleges in order to fill positions at the school. Through all of this I work to make the school and district look good. "But I guess my role with the school is kind of mother. I'd be cut off at the ankles if I didn't allow the teachers to fully discuss issues facing the school. If they turned on me, I'd be dead. They need to feel ownership of the major ideas and projects. But total shared decision making is burdensome." Many people lamented the practice of districts switching principals across school sites every so many years. But because the negotiating of authority between principal and restructuring committees is non-binding, and because the leadership of the school is so crucial, the turnover of Principals can be devastating to a restructuring effort. Nine of the schools in which we did case studies had experienced principal changes in the midst of the restructuring. In seven of these cases, it was a major setback to the process. For example, a middle school was assigned a weak principal to follow one that had been the visionary leader of their

82 87 The Unfinished Journey restructuring. The change sparked a painful political tug of war between the new principal and both the strong empowered faculty and heavily involved parent body. With no leadership to serve as mediator, buffer or communicator, the school was nearly torn apart. The policy of transferring principals to new schools after a set number of years may need to be reexamined in an era of site based restructuring. As one principal said: "The trend of changing principals regularly, which is this district's pattern, has to change in an era of restructuring schools. The principal should be allowed to remain in a school as long as they are still doing good work. But the trend is to move up to either central district or to a high school. I know my days here are numbered. And it ought to be that the school could operate with or without me, but the reality is that a principal can make or break a schoolparticularly in the midst of restructuring. I gave up my veto power to this faculty, another principal may not. And there is lots more to be done still. We have just begun." Whether it relates to assurances of principal tenure, or enabling school sites to select their own principals, there is no question that the "match" can be a make-or-break issue in restructuring schools. In some schools, principals and teachers alike spoke of the need for principals who understand and fully share the vision of the school community, and who are willing to sincerely support a process of leadership emerging from that community. As one teacher said in a school where a new Prin- cipal came on board in mid stream: "With an empowered and professional faculty like ours, any smart Principal just has to get out of the way and let us do our thing. The teachers here know as much as anyone in the nation about the frontiers of teaching. We were looking for someone comfortable with shared decision making, strong and confident enough to deal with strong teachers. Someone good with kids and parents. Where you have such a strong faculty, you need a strong Principalsomeone creating the mechanisms and ground where differences can be aired safely. Someone who will fight to protect the effort." The Principal is just one of many leaders in restructuring schools. In many schools, the key planners are just as likely to be teachers. Many principals spoke at length about the dynamics of leadership in the restructuring context: of power-sharing, of balancing their own sense of responsibility and authority with supporting the inclusion of new voices in those roles. Overall, principals explained the difficulty of negotiating and defining one's role as the school changes.

Leadership for a Restructuring School: New Roles for Principals, New Power for Teachers 83 "Last year was very hard for me because there were so many things going on. I felt like I was losing control. How could I monitor all this? How could I communicate all this? How are they ever going to be able to communicate to me sufficiently for me to keep tabs? So communication is one of the most important factors when you restructure because if you start giving teachers empowerment, you go to shared decision making and you have committees doing thingsyou have to trust that they are following through, and also that they sufficiently understand policy and the ed code. So there is important support I have to provide. And they have learned that they need to present things to the whole staff, do research, check for policy. My role has changed from being the main one in charge all the time, to being more of a facilitator, monitor and supporter."AnastacioCabral, principal, Frank Paul Elementary School This leads to implications about the kind of training administrators need, the kind of supports Principals need, and policies regarding administrative assignments. The Principalship of a school undergoing changes in authority structures can be difficult, and it can be lonely. Several principals spoke of the importance of support structures designed just for Principals. Outside facilitators can support principals, as can networks of other principals. Regardless, mechanisms that bring Principals together to discuss the shifting and all-important role of a Principal in restructuring schools appears essential.

89 84 The Unfinished Journey Anastacio Cabral Interviewed by Jackie Munoz

Anastacio Cabral has been principal at Frank Paul School in Salinas for eight years. Before becoming a principal, he worked as a teacher, migrant services coordinator and vice-principal at schools in various parts of California. He has a deep understanding of the linguistic cultural and racia! issues facing the students at Frank Paul. His own cultural background is similar to that of the community in which the school sits. The interviewer here, Jackie Munoz, is in her fourth year as restructuring coordinator at Frank Paul after seven- teen years as a classroom teacher, all in the Alisal Union School Dis- trict. The school staff strongly supports that there be a restructuring coordinator positionacknowledging that the job is too much for one teacher to do during extra hours. Jackie's job has been to facilitate change, "to get people to think beyond the four walls of the classroom." To do this Jackie has had to work seriously on building trust among the staff. Through their work together on restructuring, Anastacio and Jackie have developed great understanding of the subtleties of renegotiating the relationships between the principal and faculty in the process of restructuring. In the interview, Anastacio talked frankly about the tension for a principal in needing to "let go", to give up control to the school site staff, and yet still be the main person accountable to the district for the outcomes of restructuring.

90 86 The Unfinished Journey A Principal's View of Restructuring by Anastacio Cabral

ometimes I wonder if I'm the principal of the school or not. CCSEven before we started the Pacific Telesis restructuring project, I started thinking about a new way of being a school leader. My way of thinking was, if I involve more teachers in the decision- making process, it will be better for the whole school. So I started the school planning committee. Those were the beginning steps of restructuring the system. When Pacific Telesis came along, that helped us move faster. But as a principal who was used to the old system of being the ultimate decision maker, when I started involving other people, it felt like I was losing power myself. One of the main difficulties for me was learning to share power. Even if it's something you believe in, you feel like you are losing power. It's a matter of accountability. The more people you involve, the more difficult the monitoring and the accountability processes are. You're not only thinking about your own decisions that are going to take place, but you're looking at more people involved in different decisions to meet the same goal. So at the beginning, it was very hard for me to monitor and trust others to come up with the best decisions for students, because I was ultimately still going to be the responsible person. I have had to learn to let go and see what happens. A group that's given the power to make decisions needs to be able to see the beginning and the end, but it's sometimes hard to see an end product when they are just starting out for the first time. They have to be well organized and be accountable for what occurs, whether the plan works out or not. Some- times the Leadership Council has to pick up the pieces because somebody dropped the ball and the job was not done or wasn't completed. In that process, the principal can't just step back. Sharing power and responsibility is not just giving authority to a group of people or a teacher, it's figuring out how you help people get to that point of seeing the overview and the whole picture and being accountable. It's not only giving them power, it's working to give them support and advice. As a principal, I still sit between the school site and the district. Whatever happens, I am going to answer to the district, to the superintendent. The superintendent doesn't look at how many people are involved in making a decision; the principal is the bottom line in terms of whether the decision worked or not. This was one of the hardest things once the restructuring effort started at the school sitethat the district was still continuing in the old way of thinking and doing things. For example, while I was giving up power to teachers and to the leadership council, the district started viewing me as a leader who wasn't able to make decisions on his own. In their view, it was like somebody else was running the school, not the principal. I heard a lot of statements like "Jackie (the school's restructuring coordinator) is making all the decisions," or "another staff member's making decisions", or "Who's in charge at your school?" But I learned to cope with statements like these. The different paces we were moving, and our different understandings of restructuring made it a difficult process. The school was charging ahead with a new model of leadership, but the district was moving very slowly.

First Person: Anastacio Cabral 9i 87 di If I were to do it all over again, I would be constantly meeting with the district personnel to let them know exactly what we were doing or The school was planning to do, and how they could be part of a whole picture. I would have taken a lot of time to work with them so they could feel comfort- charging ahead able that whatever changes we would be making would be for students' success. Right from the point at which Pacific Telesis came onto the with a new model scene to start working with us to restructure, I think I should have made sure that there were district people at the early retreats to see what we of leadership, were going through. We did have a board member that we got a lot of support from. But if we had had district staff, especially the superinten- but the district was dent and the personnel person there, things would have been a lot easier for us to move faster and get the level of one hundred percent support moving very slowly. we needed. We do get support, but not to the extent we could use at the pace we're moving. And that's because they don't really understand it the PP way we do. One really big important step was the hiring of Jeannie Herrick as a liaison between Frank Paul's restructuring effort and the district. Having a middle person has helped us a lot. It also made a huge difference to have Jackie Munoz as Restructuring Coordinator. If it wasn't for the restructuring coordinator working with me and with the staff, none of this would have happened. I recommend that each school and district that are in the restructuring effort have someone designated as a restructuring coordinator to assist the principal for these things to take place. I couldn't have done it by myself. You need to have someone knowledgeable in working with people, someone who has a good rapport with people, and someone with the specific job of coordinating the effort. When I faced conflicts and difficulties, I had to figure out a process to work it out. First, I'd meet with the restructuring coordinator, to talk over whatever wasn't working, or things that I felt were just not moving fast enough. Then I'd meet with the leadership council and discuss the situation and what we should do to move forward. Involving more people in the decisionmaking process makes it easier to move forward. You get different perspectives from different people. Sometimes I, as the administrator, was thinking one way. I'd just feel it was easier to do it a certain way and not waste too much time and not debate an issue for a long time. But in a shared decision-making process, you have to have a lot of discussion, a lot of communication, a lot of researchand that ends up as a good thing. In a restructuring school in order to resolve the situation, you need to bring the staff leadership into the mode of 'Let's talk things over; let's analyze the situation, and if there were mistakes made, let's resolve them and move forward.' But sometimes it takes longer than when I make a decision on my own. When I see that something is not moving, somebody's not being accountable or responsible for the decision's resolution by a certain point, I have to just say: 'That's enough. We've been discussing the situation for so long. The majority of the staff wants it. A decision has to be made. Let's do it. Let's just move forward on this.' That becomes important to do, especially because the ad hoc committees haven't been educated enough to know what the steps are from A to Z to get something accomplished. Hopefully, we'll fill in that gap next year. I've given them the trust and authority to make decisions and to move forward. But one of the things that they brought to my attention is it's more than a matter of giving them the okay to do something. They've

88 92 The Unfinished Journey 1

not been trained as to how to do it.I really have to emphasize that. Ad Teachers haven't had the training on procedures to follow to see a project through. I've been trained how to follow through in certain things, Everything is going and the steps to do it. I've had a lot of administrative training, and they haven't. For them to take on the role of making decisions and following absolutely smoothly through on implementation, they need the training also. That is one of the things we're lacking. And we're planning to do that next year. We no conflict or anything. need the district as well as other consultants to train teachers to be leaders. They need to learn how to set goals, and how to follow a process in Just kidding! order to complete those goals. We need for a lot of people to get that training, so we don't end up going back to the same few leaders who end II up doing all the work. At our school, we have eleven or twelve ad hoc committees. We need to train the leaders how to be accountable and how to make things happen. A lot of times when people talk about sharing power, it's about the problemsbut there is also a way that it is easier. The easiest thing, to me, is that you do not work alone anymore. You have othersthe staff researching, seeing the total scope and sequence of not only programs, but the total school operations. Now, after three years, they're beginning to see that. Before, they only used to know their own classroom or one program, but now they see the total picture. At this point, I will say that it's easy to give them more power because they now understand the whole program, even though we're refining it every year. So to me, it's getting easier and easier to help an ad hoc committee understand what goals are needed and to let them go and do it. Now I can trust that eventually they're going to do the research they need to do, they're going to talk to the rest of the staff to be sure everyone buys in, they'll bring their recommendations to the leadership council. All of this creates ownership. And you know, everything is going absolutely smoothlyno conflict or anything. Just kidding! There has been a lot of conflict. It's not easy. Some of the conflict comes from what I mentionedwhen I see that something is just not moving fast enough or according to what I thought we had decided, I feel I have to step in. When I look back at situations in retrospect, I think sometimes there's been a hole in our communication as to who was going to be doing what and who was responsible for each part of that decision. At the end, though, we learn from our mistakes. When we do things now, I think we need to emphasize communication and clarification. So we learn, but you know, at times the conflicts are very tense between a few staff members and myself. Once you start building the school of the future, the Principal has to start thinking of letting go of some of the old leadership style. It just can't be the authoritarian way of doing business. And you have to do more research in curriculum, more research in technology, more research on leadership and decision-making processes and models. I got help through Pacific Telesis and through the administrative staff development training that we had at the district level. But I am still doing staff development for myself. Learning how to be a leader in this kind of changing school doesn't Lye an ending point. 1 feel that staff at Frank Paul School are in many ways moving faster than I am. So now I have to learn to be behind them; I have to learn to be with them; I have to find ways to be ahead of them sometimes. Right now my goals are to improve my communication skills, writing skills and knowledge of technology. If it wasn't

First Person: Anastacio Cabral 3 89 for restructuring and the things we're planning to do here at Frank Paul, if then I wouldn't be growing. But because of these things, it's pushing me In order to be called the to move forward. This is going to help me in the long run. I can sharpen some of my skills through training. But some of it,I school of the future, we think, for me at least, is trial and error. We know that not everything's going to work. So you take that risk. I think I used to be more afraid to need not only the staff take risks in the past. But now that I see ad hoc committees or staff members taking risks, and that it is okay that they make mistakes, that is but the principal to teaching me that I have to be willing to take the same type of risks, so that I'm able to learn and move forward. In order to be called the school move forward. And of the future, we need not only the staff but the administrator, the principal, to move forward. And that means taking risks, making mistakes, that means taking risks restructuring your way of thinking, changing the way you make decisions, and learning new ways of communicating with others. Eventually, other and learning new ways schools, other districts, are going to come and see what you have. Really, we're living what our vision is, and that is being life-long learners. of communicating. Now, nothing is stagnant, things are moving. Every time we have a visitor that comes and sees what we're doing, they say, 'Hey, you have an If excellent program. You've got it!' My statement is always, 'There's so much to be done. This is just the beginning.' There is so much more that we need to do.We definitely have more staff who feel that they have more ownership, they feel that they have a greater say in the total education process at Frank Paul School. Teachers are energetic, and they are changing their ways of teaching. That in itself means a lot to me. We are a life-long learning group at Frank Paul school, not only teachers but total staffsecretaries, custodianseverybody's learning is moving forward. So that's one of the greatest things I've seen. And the result is that students are getting a better quality of instruction. We're not there yet. Not everyone feels like they're a spoke in the wheel. There is still a small minority of teachers who aren't taking responsibility for every child or for the whole school. They're still taking responsibility for their own 30. Even if they are not that into the restructuring efforts, they still need to know what the processes, procedures, goals and objectives are. And they have to support that. Some of them don't. They're not well informed or they have put up a block, and say, 'I still want to teach the old way; I want the principal to tell me what to do,' versus working as a team. We've got to deal with that as part of the growing pains in restructuring. I see Frank Paul as on the way to becoming one of the leading schools nationwide. We're moving as a team, learning what's best for children, and designing the changes that need to be made in order to make a child successful. This is a total school operation, a total school program. Once we implement this vision, I see a school of the future being established at Frank Paul School. Every school is different. But always--whether it's middle class, high class, or a poor neighborhood, you always have to be thinking of the same thing: You have to have high standards for every child. In that sense, it doesn't matter what community you're in. But also, if I'm going to be an administrator, I have to be very knowledgeable about the culture of the community, the ethnicity, and for a community like Frank Paul, its also important to be able to speak and understand the language of that community.

90 94 The Unfinished Journey It calls for a different kind of leadership in restructuring schools. I would recommend that administrative credential programs send their students out to those schools that are in the middle of restructuring, because part of the training has to be "hands-on." Go see what's there. It's a whole new ball game.

95 First Person: Anastacio Cabral 9 I CHAPTER 5

THE INVOLVEMENT OF PAIIENTS, FAMILIES AND CAREGIVERS IN RESTRUCTURING SCHOOLS

Fvervone talks about parent involvement. There wasn't a school in this study where our researchers didn't hear comments such as, "we need more parent involvement," or "we're trying to work on parent involvement," or "parents are a key to what we are trying to do." Schools also reported parent involvement as the most problematic and difficult aspect of their restructuring. We found that parents are not typically involved in the planning or implementation of reform, nor are they encouraged to play this role. More, they are the subjects of potential school changes and debates about how to get them more involved in their own children's education and in supporting the school's educational program. California Tomorrow began this project mindful of the research which has proven that parents powerfully impact their children's learning experiences in and out of school, and that parents' involvement is especially important for children whose cultures, languages, class and national background differ from that of the teachers. "Parents are a child's first and most important educators. Parents know their children's strengths and weaknesses. By helping educators provide each child with an appropriate educational experience, they can act as essential links between the classroom and the home to reinforce and animate learning. Families and community organizations can provide crucial support to bridge gaps of language, culture and life experience that can impede a child's education or cause misunderstanding and conflict in the classroom."NCAS, The Good Common School Family and community voices are essential to the planning and assessment of programs in restructuring schools. They provide a window on the experiences of students that teachers and other professionals do not havea window on the cultural and linguistic background of the students, as well on the unique characteristics of each child. Given these perspectives, parents and caregivers can advocate for what a school could and should be as no one else can. In designing this study, therefore, parent involvement was identified as one of the crucial areas for us to explore in restructuring schools, to find out how deeply parents were involved in restructuring dialogues, and what new roles for parents are being created within restructured schools.

9 6 92 The Unfinished Journey ii "We (Latino parents) have got to watch out for our kids. We know if we weren't watching, the kind of things that happened to Given the history of us will happen to our kids, too. And, we say "no more." Our children are going to have opportunities we never had. But we schools to exclude or have no illusions. It takes our watchful eyes to be sure no one denies our children." ill-serve racial and However, this kind of watchfulness and activism often scares teach- linguistic minority ers. When teachers spoke of their resistance to parent involvement, it was to parent activism turned toward influencing the school. As one students, there is a teacher expressed: "The trick is, if you have parent activists in your school, you great need for need to be sure they are, to use the words of the old saying about the camel, in the tent peeing out, instead of outside the tent pee- community and ing in. With the parents in our school, you're never sure which way its going to go. So parent involvement is a mixed bag for us. parental involvement We need them. Sometimes we really benefit from them, but some- to monitor access and times they drive us crazy because they think they know what's best. We're the teachers." treatment of children, Conflicting perspectives about who needs to hold who accountable, and to hold schools and about what arenas of schooling parents have a right to involve themselves in, created underlying tensions in some schools. At a small number accountable. of case study schools, we observed high stress between teachers and parents over roles. The most volatile conflicts were around how much say parents should have in curriculum and pedagogy, but there were also conflicts about parents visiting the classroom. Several teachers vehement- ly opposed parents having any say in what students should be taught. Others in these school communities, especially principals and instructional aides, found themselves in the middle of this friction. One principal said: "Parent involvement is a big problem. There isn't much teacher support for it here. They (the teachers) have longevity in the school. Some have been here over 30 years. Many others, more than a decade. In their eyes, it's their school. They don't buy into parents having a say at all." The anti-parent sentiment in that case was so strong, according to an instructional aide, that one of the most powerful teachers at the school declared, "We won't let parents run this school!" In no other schools were such vehement feelings toward parents expressed. However, in several schools, teachers feeling threatened by parents had driven major conflict into the midst of restructuring, again most often when parents tried to get involved with curriculum committees or curriculum decision making. In one school, where there is strong and positive parent involvement in many other aspects of the program, parents asking for curriculum rationales set off a major dispute. Teachers appeared to feel that the parents were trespassing on their professional authority and autonomy. According to one parent at that middle school:

104 100 The Unfinished Journey School Site Strategies for Parent Involvement "Strategies to Increase Outreach to Parents and Their Involvement in the School" Most schools in this study Case Study School Sample were engaged in a wide range of strategies to involve parents.However, elementary 80 High School schools were far more active in this arena, while little was 70 n Middle School occurring at the high school level. These strategies includ- Elementary School 60 ed the following: n=14 elementary schools 8 middle schools 10 high schools Use of Parent Liaisons 0 50 One-fifth of the schools use parent liaisons. Generally, o 40 these staff members are re- v sponsible for outreach to in- v30 form parents of school meetings and activities. Frequently, 20 these liaisons have the bilingual skills to speak both the languages of the families and 10 Englishthus providing es- (0) (0) (0) sential translation and com- 0 Home-School Parent Room Parent Emphasis munication links. Liaison on Campus Education and on Parent Position Training Volunteering Creation of a "Parent Place" in the School Only a few schools had designated a room or office on the school site that could be used by parents for meetings, or to get together and talk with other parents while at the school. Bulletin boards provided space for school and community messages to be posted.

Parent Training and Classes About one-half of the schools we studied had some kind of classes 'Jr parents. In most cases these were focused upon parenting skills. Three schools had Family Literacy Programs. For example, Hawthorne Elementary School in Oakland has established the "Family Academy for English Literacy." The Title VII funded project was designed to provide instruction and support services to approximately 75 language minority families. Spanish, Cambodian, Mien and Lao are the target languages. The goal is to empower families in four principal areas: Developing basic literacy skills in native languages and English, and understanding of American culture through children's literature. Enhancing parents' ability to help their children in school by building communication skills, family unity and cultural pride. This is accomplished through the sharing and preserving of family histories, cultural memories and traditions, and by exchanging 97 The Involvement of Parents, Families and Caregivers in Restructuring Schools 93 very recent experiences as immigrants struggling to adapt to a new way of life. Despite the range in Developing an understanding of effective parenting through train- parent involvement ing and involvement in the regular school program. Improving cross-cultural understanding through interaction with strategies, most schools families from other cultural groups. were dissatisfied with Parents and families participating in the academy attend two-hour sessions twice weekly in the day or evening. Children are encouraged to the results. take part in the family learning process as well. Both English and the native languages are used in the project. Most schools attempted some mechanisms for increased communication between the school and the home. Parent newsletters, bulletin boards, telephone hotlines and more regular telephone calls with teachers are apparently becoming standard features of most elementary and middle restructuring schools.

Parents' Roles in Restructuring Restructuring schools less frequently focused on eliciting parent perspectives relative to proposed changes. In only five case study schools did parents have substantive roles and a strong presence in the school restructuring efforts. Highland Elementary School in Monterey County, one of our phone interview schools, painted a clear portrait of the significance of involving parents in the change process. When Highland made the decision to move to ungraded classes as part of the restructuring, they knew that parental support would be crucial to its success. As part of their effort to initiate a dialogue with parents about the changes, they decided to host ethnic- and language-specific meetings. School staff also wanted to hear from parents about their concerns. The Principal worried that the local newspaper would "crucify" her for holding meetings with these separate groups of parents, but she believed it was the only way to ensure focused dialogue about the cultural issues that might arise in reaction to the changes, and also to properly address the language needs of each group. Meetings were held with Latino, Vietnamese, Hindi, Filipino, Samoan and Tongan parents. This year, the school plans to conduct specific meetings with African American parents. Says the Principal: "That's how we found out that our Hindi students are political refugees! We had no idea before that. Indians were a merchant class in Fiji and were expelled by a Fiji nativist movement. It was amazing to hear that!" Despite the range in parent involvement strategies, and the fact that most schools were trying several at the same time, most were dissatisfied and disappointed with the lack of results. And, most parents of students in restructuring schools are unconnected to the reform process. This is related to several factors: very different premises about the appropriate role of parents in schools; barriers of language, culture and power; and logistics of the time and location of school planning and restructuring events.

98 94 The Unfinished Journey Different Paradigms and Assumptions for Parent involvement di Historically, there have been two distinct trends in the interaction of Parent and community parents with schools: parent involvement as an educational strategy of the public schools, and parent involvement as a political movement by activism has in many parents for access to schools. Both of these trends significantly predate the restructuring movement. This nation has a rich history of educational ways driven the advocacy on the part of parents and communities, from the African American parents who established the Smith School in Boston when their struggle for access children were excluded from the public system in the early 19th century, to those parents and advocacy groups in this century who spurred land- and accountability for mark court cases establishing new levels of access and responsiveness to minority students. Brown v. Board of Education and Lau v. Nichols are language minority and the most prominent of these. Parent and community activism has in many ways driven the struggle for access and accountability for language racial minority students. minority and racial minority students. But assorted understandings and strategies of parent involvement have operated at the same time. Extending the role of the school to work IP with parents and families goes as far back as the turn of the century. Social reformers of the time, faced with the confluence of massive immigration and soaring urban poverty, turned to the schools to reach parents with lessons ranging from nutrition and hygiene to the English language and Americanization campaigns. Throughout this century, we have experienced cycles of both struggle over who controls the schools, and emphasis by schools on parent education and involvement to support the educational program and their children's learning. In restructuring schools today, the struggle continues to negotiate the role of parents, and conversely the role of schools in the lives of families. In the schools we visited, we found three different beliefs or paradigms about parent involvement: Successful students have parents who are involved Successful schools have parents who are involved Parents have a right to democratic participation in their children's school

First Paradigm: Successful Students Have Parents Who Are Involved Most of the schools we studied based their parent involvement upon research indicating that parent efforts to help their children learn have a tremendous impact on school success. Children do well in school when their parents express high expectations for school achievement and stress the value of schooling; conduct warm, nurturing and frequent interactions with their children; establish regular routines and mealtimes; and encourage a purposeful use of time and space. Many individuals interviewed at the restructuring schools spoke of parent involvement in these termstranslated as to what parents could do at home to help their children. The prevalent belief was that for teachers to do their job at school, parents need to do their job at home. Therefore, schools employ various strategies aimed at helping parents understand and fulfill this kind of role. For educators operating solely within this paradigm, there is limited need for parent involvement at the school site or in educational decision making. The focus is on parents supporting their children as students, at

The Involvement of Parents, Families and Caregivers in Restructuring Schools 99 95 home. From the viewpoint of many, parents are less and less able to fill this crucial role in support of their children's education. The proof, they conclude, is that students are less and less able to participate fully in school. They attribute this to the inability or failure on the part of parents to support their children in the aforementioned ways, contributing to low performance and poor participation in school. At many of the restructuring schools, parents were spoken about as uneducated, poor and dysfunctionaland therefore unable to provide proper parenting or school support. References were often made to drug use by parents, single motherhood and weak family structures or values as the problems in the home lives of students. A teacher who sits on a Student Study Team at an elementary school said: "The biggest problems are with the families of the students. Broken families, parents that are incarcerated or in drug programs, children raised by aunties or grandparents. All this leads to real emotional blocks. In this school counseling is extremely important; none of us have the time to do it, yet a lot of the problems kids have are emotional. Kids are very needy, they just don't get enough attention at home. They look to us as parents because they aren't getting what they need at home. We suggest to parents where to go to get counseling, but we can't follow up to find out if they go or not. All we can do is hope parents understand and are able to implement our recommendations and referrals. It leaves a big load on us. And if we don't do it, the kids don't learn." Another teacher expressed: "Children are corning more and more from homes that aren't language-rich environments. The parents just aren't educated There is a lack of stimulation in the home. So the kids have more trouble learning. They come in with problems." In other schools, these same kinds of family dynamics were viewed with somewhat more empathy. Many teachers, counselors and administrators portrayed extensive knowledge about the difficult conditions facing many families. They acknowledged the economic recession, growing financial burdens and other problems of many families, and did not equate poverty, cultural difference or lack of education with poor parenting. Schools where these educators worked tended to try to find ways to fill in and provide needed support for children and families.

Drawing by Lupe Gonzalez, Carr Intermediate School, Santa Ana .tlEj

96 The Unfinished Journey "The dynamics and demographics are changing. New problems, different pressures hitting families, economics. The median fi income has fallen while costs have risen. So you're looking at try- Restructuring schools, ing to juggle finances for families. A lot of those pressures are on our families. We deal with a lot of families living in areas with a excited about visions of lot of danger. They don't want to go out the door on a consistent basis not knowing what's going on in terms of drug sales and what they want their exchange of gun fire. It's a very real concern for some these families. You know, we can talk about how parents should provide a schools to be, are quiet place for kids to study, or a regular routine at home for doing homework. But let's get real. It's not that families wouldn't particularly desirous love to be able to do that for their kids. It's that they often can't." for extra hands. It is Martha Pahnke, Resource Teacher, Paul Revere Elementary To enable parents to fulfill student support roles, schools are mount- important to have ing parent information, training and collaborative services efforts. For example, several restructuring schools are offering parenting skills work- parents who are willing shops, literacy workshops and drug awareness training. In addition schools are also bolstering efforts to give students supports they may not and able to help out. be receiving from home, such as tutoring, homework centers, role model programs, school linked services, etc. However, as a caveat, we observed IF a serious and growing resentment on the part of educators at many restructuring schools about having to fill in for parent "deficiencies." However perceived, schools are finding it very stressful to carry the weight of these kinds of responsibilities. When school staffs mentioned certain groups of parents as lacking the skills and values to adequately support their children's education, most often it was poor parents, parents of color or immigrant parents they were referring to. But where there are cultural, racial and linguistic differences between the prescribers (and designers) of parent trainings and the parents themselves, there is dangerous potential for cultural inappropriateness and damage to families.

Second Paradigm: Successful Schools Have Parents Who Are Involved

To Volunteer Many times, when educators speak of the need for parent involvement, it is from a desire for more hands at the school. Schools are short on resources and high on needs. They need financial, human and physical resources beyond their public funding to run a high quality program. Understaffed schools always need volunteers, and they often turn to the natural source- their students' parents. As librarian positions are cut, as Career Centers lose their funding, as buses for field trips are eliminated schools turn to the parent body. Restructuring schools, excited about visions of what they want their schools to be, have new and additional needs, and so are particularly desirous for extra hands. It is important to have parents who are willing and able to help outto help run a community fair, to help improve the school grounds, to prepare materials for a science project, and so on. At one middle school undergoing restructuring, parents helped preserve full library services for students. Budget cuts had left the school with only a part time librarian, and the library was closed for half of each day. Sever- al parents filled in the gap to keep the library open full time for the 101 The Involvement of Parents, Families and Caregivers in Restructuring Schools 97 students. At another school in a neighborhood plagued by violence, a if parent patrol was formed to enhance safety. After school, the parent Schools rely on parents patrol stands watch on the various corners surrounding the campus to prevent gang members and others from intimidating or selling drugs to to champion their students. In these restructuring schools, the availability of parents to volunteer innovations. Parents for such important jobs was crucial. There was no money to pay for these responsibilities othenvise. This then becomes what many schools view as were called on to go to critical parent involvementa volunteer parent body ready to serve. bat publicly to prevent To Fight for the School At this time of intense public scrutiny and pressure on public educa- the closing of schools, tion, coupled with the current fiscal crisis, schools often have to mount political defenses of their programs. Schools are vulnerable in many to garner resources, ways, with restructuring schools even more so as they become dependent upon special waivers and funding for their innovations. When necessary, and to protect school schools rely on parents to champion their innovations and keep the school open and functioning. Parents in a number of our case studies programs. were called on to go to bat publicly to prevent the closing of schools, to garner resources, and to protect school programs. PI For example, mobilized parents of Windsor Elementary School in Sonoma County repeatedly pressured the School Board to maintain and expand the school's innovative Spanish Immersion program that was threatened with closure. As a group, these parents were extremely vocal and political in their defense of the immersion program. Their campaign was so influential that imminently two of their own were elected to the school board. One of those elected described the process: "Parents were feeling very neglected in initial discussions about the future of the immersion program. We wanted to move from being a magnet within a larger school where our concerns weren't addressed, to having our own school. So, the Partnership School Committee was formed as parents and teachers felt they couldn't carry on the move towards an effective immersion program without such a partnership, or without having their own school. Immersion parents shaped the outcome of the election; they know how hard it is to work for something you want, and they know that power is everything. The board finally approved immersion. It was a wonderful victory."Cheryl Ziff, Windsor Elementary School The Windsor case was not the only influential parent coalition we learned about. At one magnet elementary school, Latino parents living in the neighborhood of the school and White parents whose children were bused from outside united to fight for equal bus transportation for the children. The district, facing budget cuts, had axed buses for "neighborhood" students, while maintaining buses for the magnet students, who were primarily White. The Latino students were left to walk more than a mile and cross a highway to get to the school, an especially long and dangerous trek for the youngest children. Many of their parents rose early to leave for work in the agricultural fields and couldn't walk the children to school. In the face of this problem, the full parent group,

98 102 The Unfinished journey neighborhood and magnet, Latino and white, organized first a boycott to protest the district decision, and then a campaign to restore full bus service. Although the district didn't budge, the group went public and was able to raise the money themselves to pay for bus service for the neighborhood students. These examples of parents as advocates for their students' schools are common. In this era of school vulnerability and cutbacks, we found many schools recognizing the need for an activist parent body that will fight for causes crucial to the school's operation.

To Raise Funds More and more in the era of post-Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that has eroded the property tax base on which schools and other public services survived, parents are now asked to contribute money to support school programs. While parent bodies differ substantially from community to community in their ability to give, all schools try to elicit whatever discretionary funds they can from parents. In the recent past., parent contributions provided for field trips, new library acquisitions and special assembly programs. Today, parents are asked to support far more essentials such as textbooks, office and art supplies, and sports programs.

Third Paradigm: Parents Have a Right to Democratic Participation The idea of parents' right to democratic participation in the functioning of a school was seldom present within the sites we studied. This paradigm for parent involvement has been promoted mostly by parents themselves, parent advocates and community based organizations, as well as some school staff dedicated to democratic process and school community embeddedness. These advocates stress that in a democratic society, people have a right to help shape the institutions that affect their lives. Schooling has a major impact upon the daily experiences and the life chances of students. Parents and guardians, as the representatives of their children, have a right to a say in the decisions that affect this educational experience. This can also be framed from the student perspective: children have a right for the people who know and love them best to be involved in all decisions affecting their schooling. This is particularly important for children from traditionally underrepresented and underserved communities. Schools continue to be run by people with limited or no connection to the communities and cultures of today's students. Given the history of schools to exclude or ill-serve racial and linguistic minority students, there is a great need for community and parental involvement to monitor access and treatment of children, and to hold schools accountable. Parents often spoke from this perspective in interviews with us. As one father expressed:

113

The Involvement of Parents, Families and Caregivers in Rest,- cturing Schools 99 "Curriculum is the stickler issue. Some parents want to know ii more, want detailed information, but there is resistance from teachers who feel it isn't really parent purview. It's a classic trust Conflicting perspectives issue. Teachers feel their rights are being infringed upon when parents demand to know about curriculum. Some parents didn't about who needs to approach teachers diplomatically enough and it created a lot of defensiveness and h3stility. It became political. But still, parents hold who accountable, want to know more. Now it's turned into a whole issue about the relationship between the Community Council and the Faculty and about what arenas Council." of schooling parents

Factors That Affect Equitable Involvement of Diverse Parents have a right to involve While schools operating primarily on the first two paradigms of par- themselves in, created ent involvement do actively reach out to parents, they appear to have somewhat limited concerns about parent/family participation in decision underlying tensions in making and program development. About half of the schools we studied did have formal governance bodies with designated parent input. In a some schools. few of those schools, these are effective mechanisms of parent voicebut only when accompanied by other efforts to include a much broader array IF of parents in multiple ways. The implementation of designated parent roles in governance, while an important step in acknowledging parent voice, doesn't in itself ensure the level of parental and family input that may most benefit sc'-.00ls and children. The involvement of one or two or three parents is not the same as a wide representation of active parents. We found that many parents are often missing from involvement in restructuring schools due to lack of attention to community dynamics, location and timing of meetings and events, and cultural and/or language differences.

Community Dynamics The patterns of family involvement and voice in a school are affected by community dynamics. For at least seven of the schools we visited, the changing demographics of the communities caused conflict between different parent groups. In all, the communities had shifted from predominantly African American to predominantly Latino immigrant. Language, culture and race all entered into the relationships among the parents. Three of these, elementary schools, attempted to mend the conflicts among parents. When these three schools shifted to heavy focuses on bilingual programs for Spanish-speaking students, African American parents began feeling outnumbered and fearful that their children's needs were being pushed aside. Tension grew between parents. The Principal of one of these schools spoke directly to the issue: "Because legislation requires bilingual education, it seems to some that LEP students are getting more. And in our school district, with the Consent Decree, its even more marked. It was felt by some that all the attention and money was going to LEP programs. The community was very resentful. This is explosive. We couldn't ignore it." In one school, African American parents began pulling their children 105 The Involvement of Parents, Families and Caregivers in Restructuring Schools 101 out of the s hool. In another case, they vocally pressured the school to respond to the unique needs of their children. In the third, feeling as if they had no say or ownership in the school program, the parents simply withdrew from involvement. It required thoughtful and deliberate school efforts to create forums within the schools where such tensions could be aired, and where common ground could be built. One of the schools had been holding separate meetings for English speaking and Spanish speaking parents. They decided that a common forum was necessary, and so switched to bilingual meetings. One parent said: "It was tedious in a way, waiting for the translations of everything. But it made such a difference. Because it gave everyone a face. We got to know names, and who was who's parents, and who cared about what. After a while I didn't mind the translation time so much." The three schools previously described are becoming meeting places for parents and caregivers from different communities to dialogue, form friendships, and work together on the school program. But these examples contrast markedly to the four other schools in communities where similar demographic shifts were creating conflict. Those four either chose not to do anything, or were ignorant of the depths of the splits that had grown among the parents and how they were affecting parent-school relationships. A key planner at one of these schools said: "We don't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole! We can do what we can within the school walls, working with the kids to create a kind of alternative atmosphere where they can build friendships with each other. But we can't really affect all the racism and tension out there in the community. If we stepped into the rift between the Latin and the Black parents, we'd be in big trouble."

Location and Timing "Our parents never show up for --.1ars--:\ 11t 4QQ)Fea3e)0,212. parent conferences!" lamented one exasperated teacher who sits on the Parent Involvement Committee of her school. The parents of students in the school areprimarily farmworkers, unable to take time off or to travel the distance from the fields to the school during the work day. Conferences are scheduled during work hours on a student free day. Furthermore, this teacher is monolingual English speaking. For three-quarters of the parents in the school,theirmother tongue and strongest language is Spanish. This illustrates the dilemma of schools that want more parent contact, but are unaware of the realities of parents' lives that prevent involvement. The hours and locations that are convenient

102 The Unfinished Journey to teachers are impossible for many parents. Schools with the most suc- di cess in supporting strong relationships with families have found wato provide transportation, flexible extended hours and alternative locations Schools with the most convenient for parents. Mac Dowell Sixth Grade School in San Diego draws its students from success in supporting three different neighborhoods. All are bused to the school. Parents are invited to ride the buses to school with the students whenever they wish strong relationships to volunteer in a classroom, meet with a counselor, or attend one of the regular parent organizing and training sessions. The buses return parents with families have to the neighborhoods in the late morning, then double back to drive the students home in the afternoon. Not only parents come, but other adult found ways to provide family members as well as babies and toddlers. On a day we visited, the auditorium was filled with mothers, fathers, grandparents, babies and transportation, flexible toddlers hearing a presentation from a police officer about recognizing the signs of gang affiliation. A lively discussion followed, until someone extended hours and announced that the bus was waiting. A parade of family members then headed onto the buses, while a few parents went into classrooms to visit alternative locations for the rest of the day, returning home later with their children. At Mac- Dowell, formal school meetings are held in the evenings in the neighbor- convenient for parents. hoods of the students, making it convenient for working parents and parents without cars to interact with one another and with school staff.

Culture and Language Differences Many of the schools we visited that had achieved some level of parent involvement were still confounded by how to involve their language minority parents. These tended to be schools where faculty did not have the language skills to speak to the parents. Language difference is a major barrier to high quality communication and dialogue. Even when parents have some English skills, it is difficult f )r them to express the complexities of the needs of their children, their cultural values and educational philosophy. The schools we visited were trying a wide range of mechanisms for involving English-fluent parents, while minimal efforts were going into any means of communication with their language minority parents. These efforts were usually one-directional, such as sending information to parents through a bilingual announcement or newsletter. So, schools and restructuring dialogues suffer in their ability to respond to the needs of language minority families. Some schools were attempting to bring language minority parents into the dialogue. Horace Mann Middle School in San Francisco has a trilingual (Chinese, Spanish and English) monthly parent newsletter produced by parents. Actually, the word "newsletter" doesn't give the full flavor. It is a weighty publication t.bout issues in school restructuring and educational philosophy, as well as announcements about the school program. The school also has bilingual hotlines that parents can call for updated information in their own language about school activities, announcements of meetings, homework projects, etc. In Melrose Elemen- tary School's professional library for teachers and parents, books about whole language approaches and school reform are available in both Spanish and English. Where there is cultural or language mismatch between staffs and parents, parent involvement becomes more complex. An elementary school bilingual instructional aide, who works closely with parents, said: 07 The Involvement of Parents, Families and Caregivers in Restructuring Schools 103 Ai "I immigrated to the U.S. four years ago. When I came here I couldn't speak English so I know what it feels like to have ideas Those with the primary and not be able to speak them. Language is a big problem here. Too many White teachers are just unaware of the problems the responsibility, best kids have. There is no way those teachers can communicate with the parents. The kids have no one to help them at home with knowledge and deepest their English homework. It's yen hard for the kids to be caught in the middle. It's very hard for the parents. I wanted to do more love for a child also parent workshops and meetings in Spanish, but the teachers felt it was not my place `o do that and they wouldn't know what I was have the greatest need saying." and right to a say in the Not only language, but culture as well is important in relationships between families and the school faculty. Teaching and learning, discipline schooling of that child. and schooling are unique from culture to culture. The national schooling system of the United States, for example, is unique in its expectations for 99 parent involvement. It also differs from other cultures in the relative infor- mality between students and teachers, in the role of play and manipula- tives in the school program, in the degree to which students are expected to voice and defend their opinions, in the use of discussions, and in many other areas. At restructuring schools where school staff share the cultural identity and language of the parents, or are from the same community, these differences are better bridged. Teachers are aware of the home culture and its potential role in student learning, as well as appropriate expectations and formats for dialogue with parents and families. The alienation from school of generations of African-American families, Native American families and Mexican American families is long documented. Parents whose own educational experiences were negative do not readily trust their children's schools, nor do they believe their participation will be welcomed or respected.

Conclusion All three of the parent involvement paradigms discussed here are appropriate for different times and places. Students do need someone to monitor and help with homework, and to promote the values of schooling. Schools do need people who will fight for their preservation, volunteer labor and contribute discretionary funds. But those roles do not necessarily have to be filled by parents, and often they cannot be. So, the task for schools is to focus upon multiple ways of filling these crucial student achievement and school survival roles. It is only the third paradigm, parental rights to democratic participation in the schools, that cannot be separated from parent, family and caregiver involvement. Those with the primary responsibility, best knowledge and deepest love for a child also have the greatest need and right to a say in the schooling of that child. This is the arena of parent involvement that is currently weak- est and requires the greatest attention. Without this input, schools are at a decided disadvantage for designing appropriate programs, and children are at risk of being misunderstood, miseducated and excluded. This is particularly true where school staff are not of the communities, cultures, national backgrounds or language groups of the students. Schools must have formal mechanisms which ensure and facilitate the meaningful participation and voice for the parents/family/caregivers

104 les The Unfinished Journey of all students.Inorder forthis involvement to be meaningful, location and timing must be flexible to accommodate the diverse lives of parents and caregivers. And, ideally as many school staff as possible should have the bilingual skills to be able to speak with parents and families in their home language. Where this is not the case, the school must develop multiple mechanisms to provide translation and mediation through a combination of printed, telephone, and face to face formats that are culturally and linguistically appropriate. These are necessary to encourage, facilitate and ensure communication between the home and school. One of the clearest lessons we learned in the field was that school staffs are close to overwhelmed with the enormous challenges of reshaping an educational system and implementing new reforms. At the same time, parents, the majority working hard outside the home and many negotiating a new culture and tremendous hardships, cannot fulfill the multiple supports needed by children and schools today. Entire communities need to share in this responsibility. For children of today to be fully supported in school, several components need to be in place: 1. Schools and communities need to implement multiple mechanisms to address the needs of students that parents and families may be unable to provide. These include homework hot-lines, tutoring, homework centers open after school and evenings, adult volunteers to help students with their homework; computer systems for students to check their progress; advisors, advocates, and collaborative service arrangements to ensure that children and families are linked to adequate food and shelter, legal aid and health and mental health services. 2. Communities must unite in defense of public education in general, and in local schools in particular. This does not mean blessing the schools to continue as they are, but advocating for the resources and support that will allow schools to offer diverse students the best and most equitable education. Whether through public education foundations, school volunteers organizations, or local civic organizations, schools need more than just the parents of the currently enrolled students to understand and fight for public investment in education. In adaition to garnering political support and extra discretionary funds, advocates can mobilize a flow of volunteers to schools, greatly easing the burden on parents alone, and contributing a wealth of talent to the students and the schools.

1109

The Involvement of Parents, Families and Caregivers in Restructuring Schools 105 3. Teachers need training and assistance in effective, respectful two- way communications with parents, particularly across languages and cultures. Mechanisms include cross-cultural communication trainings, staff sessions for brainstorming about working with parents, and networks of both cultural liaisons and culturally sensitive mediators. 4. For parents to be partners in school reform, the organizations in their communities must be strengthened to serve as a base of parent and community advocacy on school reform issues. The independence of these organizations from the school system, and their embeddedness in the communities of the students, allows them to provide parents organizational support that is both accessible and comfortable, and also offers an autonomy that is sometimes necessary. 5. In a diverse society, public schools become one of the few institutions where parents and families from different cultures, neighborhoods, language groups and backgrounds find themselves interacting. Given this responsibility, schools need to consciously design mechanisms to mediate, facilitate and nurture relationships among parent groups, both for the larger social purpose, and also as a basis for the kind of open dialogue necessary in a restructuring school. These mechanisms may include cross community potlucks and social events, deliberate recruitment to ensure that school activities involve all sectors of the parent community, and providing translation support so parents can hear from and speak

to each other. . 6. Finally, the notion of parent involvement and the specific strategies schools design for it need to be broadened to include the many different loving people in a child's life who fill what has traditionally been viewed as the parent role in our culture. For many children and youth, this role is filled by grandparents, aunts, uncles, adult siblings or foster and adoptive families. Schools must be sensitive to diverse family configurations and work as a team with all the adults in a child's life who are committed to his or her best interests.

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106 The Unfinished Journey SCHOOL .PROFILE,

Vaughn Street Elementary School: Lessons in Parent Involvement

According to many teachers and parents, the most powerful outcome of Vaughn Street Elementary School's restructuring effort is the increased involvement of parents and families in the school, and the nature of that involvement. At the time of a California Tomor- row site visit, parents were exercising power in site decision making, including staff hiring, due to their representation in both the School Leadership Council and the new .Family Service Center's Program Com- mission. These changes had come after many years of struggle related to demographic shifts and ethnic conflict. And the school was very aware that there was still important work to be done to make sure that all parents were represented in the school. Vaughn Street Elementary School was the first charter school in Cali- fornia. It is nestled in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, in a low- income neighborhood in the north side of Pacoima. In the past decade the community has shifted from 100 percent African American to majority Latino, many immigrants. At the time of our visit, Vaughn was serving 1,085 students, 89% Latino and 11% African American, but according to the Union Representative, that representation of African American students was less than in the community as a whole. Many African American families, she said, chose to send their children to other schools in the district. Seventy-eight percent of Vaughn's students are limited English proficient. Forty percent of the families, many with five to six children, earn under $15,000 per year. The population is extremely transient, though mobility had recently dropped from 47% to 39%. The majority of children are at Vaughn for less than 5 years. Before restructuring morale was very low. As one parent put it: "The past principal did not like talking to parents or dealing with their problems or concerns related to their children. There was a considerable amount of antagonism in the schoolteachers and parents were pitted against each other, teachers and the principal were pitted against each other. No one got along." Union representative Stephanie Moore recalled: "The Black kids and parents were alienated and the Black kids were the first to be suspended. We witnessed some real Black flight from Vaughn. The last principal got rid of most of the Black teachers; there were 12 or 13 of us, but only two of us are left. It was complicated. Some of it was because of the emphasis on getting bilingual Latino teachers. They've got the numbers, but the Black kids, even though a smaller population, really need specific attention, and that just wasn't on the agenda." Principal Yvonne Chan arrived at the school and said she felt an immediate need to make changes and build a renewed sense of trust.

108 The Unfinished Journey 1 1 1 "Since the nation was moving to school-based management, I felt Ad school-based management could be used as a tool to build that trust here at Vaughn." Parent involvement Chan also believed that restructuring could be the tool to help assure and empowerment that "every child gets up to grade-level." She said the fact that she is Asian, and therefore not associated with either of the ethnicities in con- were stressed in flict at Vaughn, helped her to play a peace-maker role. Events within the Los Angeles Unified School District encouraged every aspect of the Vaughn's school-based management process to go forward. In 1989, a collective bargaining agreement was signed that allowed for the shift to Family Services Center, school-based management. In July of 1990, the Board of Education and the Central Council accepted 40 school-based management proposals including a 50% affording schools additional site-level powers including more control over staff development, student discipline, local budgetary matters, use parent/ 50% provider of school equipment and the school schedule. The Vaughn School Lead- ership Council was structured to be jointly chaired by the principal and governing commission. the UTLA union chapter chair, and included teachers, elected parents, and a classified employee.

Family Services Center A centerpiece of Vaughn's restructuring plan was the creation of its Family Services Center, an effort to link with other child- and family- serving agencies. This center, which is in large part run by parents for parents, has been credited with leading the way for Vaughn parents to become involved in other important school activities as well. Vaughn had been picked by the Los Angeles Educational Partnership and the North Los Angeles Region United Way as the first site of a joint initiative to demonstrate how school-linked services combined with quality early childhood programs could improve developmental and school outcomes for children, as well as empower families. The initiative was funded through foundation and private corporation donations and redeployed resources. It was also awarded an SB 620 grant after our site visit. While the Family Services Center was still being developed during our visit, it was already providing a range of services to families including health care, parent education classes from English as a Second Lan- guage to aerobics and legal aid. Mental health counseling was being offered by a local non-profit organization, Hathaway Children's Services, funded through a federal funding stream (Short Doyle Medi-Cal). Coop- eration of the county Health Department had also made it possible for children to receive free immunizations and well-child health screenings. Yoland Trevino, the Director, said since she had started, the center had served approximately 250 families in some way, including workshops, classes or other services. About 30 families had been worked with intensively. Twelve families were utilizing the mental health services, most of them Latino with the exception of three. Parent involvement and empowerment were stressed in every aspect of the Family Services Center, including a 50% parent/ 50% provider governing commission. Parents met prior to each commission meeting to set the agenda. Trevino said she made sure to bring a parent with her whenever she attended an outside meeting. 112

School Profile: Vaughn Street Elementary School 109 According to Trevino, school restructuring and the opening of the Family Service Center have placed parents and teachers at the same table to discuss children. Parents no longer see themselves as relinquishing their children. This required energy and sensitivity on the part of Connie Dubin and Dorothy Fleisher, the two main architects of the Family Ser- vice Center initiative. "Part of the process is increasing the comfort level of the parents in sitting together with the providers. During the first meeting, providers, parents and guests were clearly separate. Now parents who formerly were silent will get up and offer to be the simulta- neous translator."Connie Dubin

Parent Empowerment According to staff, as parents began to feel more powerful in the Family Services Center, they also began to take an interest in school accountability and their own role in that responsibility. For example, some parents were proud to have recently assisted students in their science projects, many of which earned the highest awards. Trevino said that site based management empowered parents to ask questions and know that their child's education is not solely the teacher's responsibility. Parent Jorge Lara said that parents have found that their opinions and requests for changes at the school have been well respected and addressed. Parent Guadalupe Perez said she was amazed, but pleased, that parents were asked what they needed and wanted from the school "what do you think is best?"including budgetary, personnel and curriculum decisions. She also pointed out that almost everyone has ideas as to how make the school better. According to Perez, before school restructuring and before principal Yvonne Chan had come to the school, parents were shy and afraid to speak up. Now the school's attitude is, "You count too. You're part of us and the system." In turn, parents have more confidence in their abilities to help their children with schoolwork, and motivation to seek educational opportunities and advancement for themselves. Parent LaTonya Greathouse said: "When I first came here, I rarely spoke. Now you can't hardly shut me up. I came to see how I could become a volunteer. Now I am going for my GED and I am trying to get my husband to be involved." Despite the increased sense of empowerment among parents, the enthusiasm was not necessarily shared by all teachers. Their views differed on what the ideal relationship with parents is or should be. Teacher Suzanne Llamas favored an atmosphere where parents would feel welcome walk into her classroom anytime, feel like they belong, and know how to help. Many other teachers were drawing the line, however, at parents walking into their classrooms at any time. Recalling Vaughn's negative experiences between teachers and parents in the past, teacher and union representative Moore said: I "Most teachers do feel they want parents involved, but we have to build up trust because of what happened before."

Ho 113 The Unfinished Journey Moore said she would like to see relationships where the teachers are not perceived by the parents as enemies, nor as babysitters. She did believe there should be more restricted access to the classroom for parents, and a more defined role for them, including not only helping with homework but instilling discipline in their children. One parent, Ms. Ochoa, spoke for many when she stressed that the biggest problem facing the school was lack of African American parent participation. Only two African American parents were involved in the Family Service Center at the time. According to one African American parent, other African American parents were unwilling or did not see the benefit of becoming involved. Others said there was still a lack of cultural awareness on the part of teachers. Moore said that in the past the emphasis had been on African Americans learning about Latinos, rather than both learning about each other. African American parents continued to be very concerned about their own children's needs and strengths being recognized. Parents Lara and Perez said the establishment of the Family Service Center was a major victory for both Latino and African American parents who worked together in seeking the school's support for its creation, but they wished more African American parents would get involved. Those African American and Latino parents who were involved in the school were working together, they said, to change negative attitudes and stereotypes about each other and among their own children; and increase African American parent participation, student enrollment, and cultural awareness in the school. All realized, however, that great sensitivity would be needed and that attitudes and stereotypes were not going to change overnight. The work begins in the home, they said, and ultimately, the attitudes of the entire community would have to change.

114 School Profile: Vaughn Street Elementary School l I l CHAPTER 6

COMMUNITY FORCES FOR CHANGE

The education of children is and should be a community concern. In this wave of school reform, proposals for how to create schools that will work more effectively for our diverse and complex society are coming from numerous communities and 'constituencies outside the formal K-12 schooling system. Community advocacy organizations concerned about equity and access, business groups concerned about the preparation of the labor force, legislators seeking "results for our money", and taxpayers feeling the squeeze on their incomesall can now be found in the public dialogue calling for school reform. Statewide school-voucher initiatives attempt to apply marketplace pressures to improve public education. Community groups file lawsuits to bring the force of the courts to the task of school reform. Partnerships between businesses and schools lead to innovative programs such as career academies. Religious groups lobby school boards to amend curriculum content. Multiple agendas and strategies are working simultaneously to impact how young people are educated and socializedand to fundamentally change our schooling system. School restructuring can potentially open avenues for dialogue among these varied community forces. And, where it is occuring, that dialogue is resulting in all parties reexamining old strategies, roles and relationships. This chapter is about two cities we studied where this kind of dialogue is happeningand strongly impacting school reform. We will attempt to explore the dynamics between "outside groups" and the "school system," and between schools and communities, each with unique agendas. These two examples illustrate the struggles among the diverse groups to learn to see each other as partners in the endeavor to restructure schools. In many districts, teachers' unions have been the key forgers of a restructuring reform planplacing teacher professionalism and empowerment as the centerpiece. In a few districts, a visionary Superintendent has been the force paving the way. In at least two cities in California, Oakland and Los Angeles, district-wide restructuring efforts have been fundamentally shaped through leadership and intense involvement from community groups outside of the schools. Their stories illustrate the tug and pull as groups with differing agendas attempt to define a broader community agenda for school reform.

Oakland In Oakland, the defining forces of an ambitious district wide school reform plan were 1) a citizens commission and 2) a community vision. These were spurred by major crises in the district's leadership and financial situation. In 1989, the Oakland Unified School district had seen five superintendents in six years, and was continuing to operate amidst grand jury indictments, allegations of corruption, and budget shortfalls. Public concerns were widespread about inequities within the schools and the

112 115 The Unfinished Journey underachievement of students. Although the district declined a state bail-out loan, unprecedented state legislation mandated that it develop a five-year fiscal and education plan, and threatened to appoint an advisory trustee with discretion to take control of the local school board. As public concern mounted, and the school board continued its latest search for a new Superin- tendent, two respected non-profit community-based organizationsthe University-Oakland Metropoli- tan Forum and the Urban Strategies Council joined forces to create the Commission for Positive Change in the Oakland Public Schools. The Com- mission was established as an independent, privately funded body without formal authority over the school district, but it was commited to dramatically improving the quality of public education in Oak- land. It was a powerful coalition, comprised of nineteen individuals from higher education, business and the non-profit sector, and racially and ethnically diversereflecting the Oakland community. In many ways, its membership read like a "who's who" of activists and leaders in the city. The Com- mission viewed its role explicitly as an advocate to help shape and sustain change in the schools, to restore stability and public confidence. This was an ambitious role. The Commision was not elected or appointed, and had not been asked to take this responsibility. Writing about this in a Stanford Law and Policy Review article, Com- Students at an Oakland missioner Angela Blackwell and Urban Strategies staff person Martine Elementary School Makower explained: "Three assumptions governed the early stages: as a body acting without formal authority, the Commission's impact would depend upon its capacity to capture the vision and moral authority of the community. As outsiders seeking to cause change within the school system, the Commission had to understand the complexities of the system, and establish trust and credibility with policy makers and practitioners inside the system. Determined to produce dramatically improved results for students throughout the district, the Commission had to focus on systemic change." Despite a cooperative posture between the district and the Commis- sion, there was much bridge-building to do. From the first, the Commis- sioners and the newly appointed Superintendent committed themselves to open dialogue and working together, understanding that one might represent "community" and "outside" forces, the other "inside" and "system" concerns. The Commission began its work with a series of community meetings from January to April 1990, asking people throughout Oakland three questions: "What do you need and expect from our public schools?", "What are you willing to do for the Oakland public schools?", and "What would this process have to produce for you to feel it was worth-

Community Forces for Change 113 1 && while?". The meetings were held in churches and other community settings across the city, and brought more than 800 people into the process. The Commission's These were energetic meetings, and a message arose within them strongly and consistentlyequity, safety and excellence. Out of these forums was impact would depend published Good Education in Oakland Schools: A Community Vision for Positive Change. It states, in part: upon its capacity to WE EXPECT an ethical school system that teaches values and capture the vision and adheres to them WE EXPECT success for our children moral authority of the WE EXPECT teachers and principals to be competent and commited community. to excellence and to mold high expectations for each child WE EXPECT celebration of the diversity in our community If WE EXPECT a school district accountable for carrying out its educational mission competently, efficiently and equitably WE EXPECT good working conditions for all school district staff and a safe, clean, hospitable environment for learning WE EXPECT a partnership between schools and the community because the schools alone simply cannot do all that we want. In that first report, the Commission for Positive Change committed its resources to three objectives: keeping the focus on equity, promoting staff development, and urging an inclusive process for achieving positive change at each school site. Having heard the community concerns and vision, the Commission turned to involving people within the school district. Panels were established to do fact finding and to develop recommendations for strategies in response to the community mandate. Teach- ers, principals, classified staff and parents participated in these panels, resulting in a second publication, Good Education in Oakland: Strate- gies for Positive Change. The report described a litany of obstacles that would need to be overcome in the district, and proposed the following strategies: a major emphasis on staff development and renewal, district wide accountability, planning, "honest assessment aligned with the community expectations", stronger communication mechanisms, increased support for students (including the coordination of multiple community resources to respond to the life experiences of students), and resource management including a commitment to principles of equity in the allocation and development of resources in the district. The work of the Commission paved the way for the district's five- year plan, crafted by the new Superintendent Richard Pete Mesa with input from staff, teachers and parents. The plan outlined desired student outcomes along with the conditions, institutional changes and broad strategies necessary for getting there:

114 117 The Unfinished Journey "It is the philosophy of the Oakland Unified School District to encourage systemic restructuring efforts. Our restructuring can be defined in many ways. Elements included are: offering students vigorous, challenging curriculum with frequent opportunities to experience success; providing students with positive individual attention so they will feel nurtured and will have ownership of their school; developing a vision that allows all students to grow and excel." The plan offered a framework specifying the student outcomes which the board and the community expected schools to achieve, the essential conditions that must be put in place, and the broad strategies needed to bring about the desired outcomes. The structuring of learning would take place at the site, and the district would concentrate on facilitating and supporting the achievement of each school's vision. The district's role was viewed as responding to the needs of those schools involved in the process so that greater decision making could reside within the school site communityand to ensure accountability. This emphasis on both local site and community control with district wide accountability stemmed from the years. long history of pressure for school reform in Oaklanda movement which was heavily community based. The five-year plan also called for a district level restructuring committee including representatives from the administration, school board, business and community, union, teachers and principals. This committee's charge was to facilitate restructuring at school sites, partly by helping schools to understand and construct workable budgets and to find additional sources of funding. They also had to respond to school decisions about necessary changes, and requests for assistance. The plan called for the development of a principal training center to retrain principals as collaborative team leaders who could support restructuring. The plan also called for the district to assist schools in developing their own restructuring plans through a process of weekend retreats. Here schools could focus on the relationships between the district's plan and their own site's visions for reform. During the Spring of 1991 every school sent a team to a weekend retreat held at a nearby site owned by Pacific Gas & Electric. These retreats were organized by the Commission arid Superintendent's staff with between five and seven schools participating each weekend. Each school's team included administrators, teachers, parents and classified staff. The weekend was spent learning about the district's five-year plan as well as discussing and analyzing the situations at each of the school sites to help them with their restructuring plans. Brainstorming focused on identifying the forces that would support or impede achievement of the educational. goals. As school teams developed their own visions, they also identified needed support and resources. Afterwards, teams were to return to organize their own school wide change plans, while the district's representatives were to design support roles from the central office. Oakland tied its five-year plan to the creation of ten "demonstration/training centers". Each demonstration school receives extra resources while accepting responsibility to create a model of schoolwide change. Goals they must work for include: a safe and secure school climate, interactive teaching, attention to students' life circumstances, collaborative home-school interaction, assessment of improvement, and

Community Forces for Change Ala 115 support for classroom learning. The Demonstration School approach is rooted in the district's conviction that enough is already known about how to teach children well. Determined to spread such knowledge, the district invested in bringing two nationally recognized approaches to Oakland: the Bruce Joyce/Beverly Showers content-based staff development approach and James Comer's child development and collaborative process approach. These reflected the district's commitment to professional development and capacity building, and to addressing the "whole child". In this sense, reform in Oakland was not about creating new models or theories. It was about demonstrating proven strategies, and developing a trained cadre of commited teachers within the district to work with other schools. A site accepting the challenge of serving as onz of the demonstration training centers was given ten extra days of staff development for instructional staff, 20 days of extended school year instruction for at least one-third of the students, and the infusion of state of the art technology. Parent involvement and site-based development of plans based on research and analysis of students' and school needs undergirded the process at each school. About half of the demonstration schools elected to work with the Bruce Joyce/Beverly Showers model, and half are implementing Comer. One high school is implementing a science and technology based Afro-Centric curriculum. The demonstration effort is being funded through roll-over categorical funds, and approximately $9 million of Title V desegregation funds. While the five-year plan school reform thrust in Oakland provides a level of district leadership and support unusual in California, it contrasts to the site autonomy movement elsewhere that is focused primarily on teacher empowerment, governance and school site management. Some school site staff felt the choices for demonstration models were dictated "top down". The vision had been established by the community, leading some teachers to feel they were brought into the process only at the point of fact finding and designing strategies to achieve the assigned vision. One teacher explained: "We're a demonstration school now, but it's a lot more than we bargained for! We got into it because our school was cooking. We had so much going onwonderful projects and programsand we needed to pull together all the fragments. But instead of getting a process that supports our own self examination, we got something imposed on us. We had to choose a model and approach that the district offered. It's a contradiction, isn't it? We were chosen because we have so much energy and commitment and good ideas. But then we get something imposed on us! The ability to think for ourselves is what got us this far. We don't want other models, and don't want any other models to get credit for our homegrown reform. Most of all, we resent being talked down to by high priced consultants!" There are still tensions between school sites and central district. There are also still tensions between those working "outside" the system and those "inside". Two years into its work, the Commission for Positive Change in the Oakland Schools published a report calling attention to the high rates of suspension overall in the district and in particular

116 119 The Unfinished Journey schools, and the disproportionate impact upon African American stu- Ai dents. Naming schoolsthose with large suspension and exclusion rates, as well as those with good programswas highly controversial. Princi- None of the players pals felt they had been betrayed, and expressed resentment and anger at the "outsiders". The Commission maintained that its primary commit- walked away. The ment was to protect students and to call attention to inequities and exclusions. The next step was crucial. The Commission had to make it community has taken clear that they were there to helpnot just to critique and attack. And the district had to make clear that it accepted the critique, and needed responsibiility for and wanted help. What followed were a series of inservice workshops at school sites, in an effort to highlight good practice where it occured. owning, directing and The important lesson has been that none of the players walked away. The community has taken responsibiiliry for owning, directing and sup- supporting a change porting a change process. Thi district leadership and staff have heard those community voices loud and clear and chosen to add their profes- process. The district sional expertise to the task of making that community vision real. "Top down", community "outsiders"the tensions are often therebut there leadership and staff is less and less finger pointing. However the involvement of players at the school site, at the district level, in the community is feltwhat is have heard those unusual about Oakland is the presence of these multiple levels and factors in trying to shape a new vision of schooling for Oakland. And, at community voices every level, squarely on the agenda is a commitment to issues of equity and diversityplaced there first by community voices, then by the Com- loud and clear and mission's insistence on reviewing student achievement data by race and ethnicity and neighborhood. chosen to add their In the close of Strategies for Positive Change, the Commission wrote an epilogue evoking the story of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Lion and professional expertise the Tinman searching for the Wizard of Oz. They wrote: to the task of making "There is no wizard. If the Oakland public schools are going to change, it is up to the people who make up the school district and that community vision those who depend upon it to demand and work for change. There is no need to put new brains in our children; they already real. have perfectly good brains that need only to be challenged. We don't need new hearts to rid the district of racism, low expectations and defeatism. What we must do is set standards for behavior and accountability with consequences for those who cannot or will not produce the results we seek. We don't need a single courageous leader to provide us with vision and direction. We are more capable than anyone of visualizing what we want for our children and developing plans and strategies for achieving our goals. It is time for the people of Oakland to click our heels three times and wake up. We can create excellence throughout our district. We have the power to do that ourselves. There is no wizard. And there is no place like home."

Los Angeles In Los Angeles, restructuring first derived primarily from a teachers' union drive for site based management. In fact, "restructuring" in Los Angeles Unified School District was almost synonymous with "site based management". Bill Anton, then Superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District described it thus:

Community Forces for Change 120 117 "School-based management is the most specific and potentially critical component of our reform efforts. It calls for teachers, parents, staff and administrators to make management decisions and provide innovative methods to raise student achievement at local school levels. The underlying belief is that those closest to the students know best how students will learn...Through decentraliza- tion and shared decision-making the school-based management schools will have the freedom to take risks, to question long-standing principles and practices and to try new programs to maximize student achievement."Thrust, 9/91 Site based management in Los Angeles Unified was formalized after a bitter nine-day teachers strike in 1989. Part of the new contract guaran- teed site based management in an effort to meet teacher demands for greater autonomy at their school sites. The plan aimed to shift control of campus operations and curriculum development from the central office to school based elected councils of teachers, parents and administrators. The underlying theory was that education would be more responsive to children if decisions about the educational program were made closer to the classroom. The power sharing plan created by the district and union has three formal phases:

Phase 1: Shared Decision Making School leadership councils were to be elected at all school campuses. Each council was to have 16 members, half teachers and half a combination of parents, students, the principal and community representatives. The council would have jurisidiction in five areas- staff development, scheduling, discipline, school equipment, and a limited number of budgetary items.

Phase 2: School Based Management Schools with the approval of two-thirds of the faculty, the principal and a majority of parents would submit a plan that outlined the restructuring vision, including goals and possible obstacles. The school councils would make significant curricular and instructional changes and could petition the State Board of Education to waive requirements and regula tions which prevent certain changes. Schools could also request that the district allow them more control over hiring and their budget.

Phase 3: Broad School Based Management Schools would exercise a large degree of autonomy, broadening their decision making authority to include other aspects of campus operations.

The contract agreement called for the district to support the efforts of schools to create site based management councils through the creation of a school restructuring office based in the district's downtown office. This office was to provide technical assistance for building consensus and running meetings. Schools involved in the process were allowed to apply for eight pupil free staff development days per year, funded out of SB 1882 and SB 1274 district funds. In January of '93 ninety-two schools in the large district had passed Phase 1. But restructuring in the district was not easy. The district allo-

118 121 The Unfinished Journey cared no funds directly to schools to help them develop or implement restructuring plans, and school councils lacked authority over shrinking campus budgets. Thus the ability to implement reforms was severely hampered. The fact that site based management had been won through a bitter strike left a portion of the district's central office and administrators resistant. A major fiscal crisis had resulted in paycuts for teachers, very low morale among teachers, and another threatened teachers strike. Trust and communication between school sites and the district, and between the teachers union and the district office were highly problem- matic and at times openly hostile during this period. Furthermore, very little actual support to school sites materialized. Over the past four years, spending reductions had cut the district's budget by more than $1 bil- lioneliminating more than 4,000 positions and increasing class sizes to as high as 39 students. The district was unable to devote resources to the levels of technical assistance, professional development, and facilitation which schools would require to plan and move forward on restructuring. Given the turmoil of the central administration, schools were dependent upon seeking support not from the district, but from elsewhere. In desperation, both the district and the union turned to the Los Angeles Educational Partnership to play a major support role. In response, LAEP coordinated a cadre of business sector "coaches" and facilitators assigned to site based management schools. These facilitators have expertise within the corporate sector on organizational change, and make themselves available to the school sites on a part time basis. Linda Kraemer, who had been the Total Quality Manager for McDonnell Douglas, serves this role at Franklin High School: "My job at McDonnell Douglas was to facilitate meetings and help plan for changes. The process there is so similar to Franklin that it's scary! Unmotivated managers and teams, needing to build a sense of being a team, create incentives, and work on poor communicationthat's just what schools must do. I facilitate meetings, but I also spend a lot of my time just watching and listening to people, and then pulling the Principal aside and saying 'this is what I see going on', and then pulling the union rep aside and saying 'this is what I think is happening'. I give them feedback on their process. But the whole business facilitator role is very hard. It takes a long time to earn their trust. I'm helpful, and I enjoy this work, but it's not my input really that is making the difference between success or not. They're getting there on their own. Outside resources would make a huge difference, though. The momentum is building and the desire is here, but it would happen so much faster and better if they had some money to hire subs so teachers could meet together and really think things through." In addition to the business facilitators, LAEP hosted conferences where schools could share what they were doing, and provided some limited grants to individual school sites. At the same time, citing budget cuts, the district closed the restructuring office. A January 5, 1993 Los Angeles Times article reviewing the school based management plan concluded: 122 Community Forces for Change 119 Ai "The power sharing plan has fallen far short of expectations, leaving most of the Los Angeles Unified School District's 700 schools In the midst of this operating as they always have, with decision making still firmly in the hands of the sluggish central bureaucracy." crisis, 'a coalition called The cumulative effects of mushrooming class sizes, severe cutbacks in the Los Angeles supplies, a cumulative 12% pay cut for teachers, bitterness left from the earlier strike and the threat of another strike in many cases broke the Educational Alliance momentum for reform. Relationships were bitter and divided within the district. Fingerpointing and anger were evidentteachers furious with for Restructuring Now administrators, administrators and teachers angry at the central office, the central office blaming the problems of the district upon teachers. (LEARN) was formed. While some individual schools found the resources, energy and will to make strides forward in restructuring, the district-wide reform process Their single point of was grinding to a halt. Meanwhile another major city wide force was gaining momentum. agreement at the In the midst of this crisis, a coalition called the Los Angeles Educa- tional Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN) was formed, comprised beginning was simply of civic leaders and representatives of Los Angeles' diverse education, ethnic, business, labor, academic, religious and social advocacy con- that some kind of stituencies. Mike Roos, formerly a high ranking Democratic member of the state Assembly signed on to head LEARN. The privately funded systemic change in the organization was established to develop legislative and policy initiatives aimed at systemic changes to "enrich the quality of [children's] educa- schools was needed, tional experience and measurably improve their academic growth and achievement." An initial working group of thirteen carefully selected, and that saving the powerful leaders from various segments of Los Angeles was convened. Their single point of agreement at the beginning was simply that some public schools in Los kind of systemic change in the schools was needed, and that saving the public schools in Los Angeles was crucial to the life of that city. Angeles was crucial to They also agreed that any document drafted by 13 peopleno matter how influential or visionary those 13 might bewould be just one the life of that city. more reform report on a shelf. So their goal was to build a movement. And they understood that a movement for reform in Los Angeles had to include the multiple communities and constituencies of the city. IF An initial set of somewhat generic and largely non-controverisal reform ideas was shaped. Based upon a set of generally touted school reform ideas, LEARN forged a coalition among a number of groups which had been shaping reform agendas for the schools. These included: Los Angeles Educational Partnership, The 2000 Partnership, Workforce L.A., Kids First, the Los Angeles Roundtable for Children, the Los Ange- les Area Chamber of Commerce, the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Business Roundtable, and Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics. At the heart of their plan was an emphasis on decentralizing the school system, transfering decision making authority from Sacramento and the central office to the school site. A central principle was that "all children can learn"; this is cited by Mary Chambers, staff person at LEARN, as "downright revolutionary". There was in the vision, a heavy emphasis on holding school site decision makers accountable. It was an effort, in the words of its chair, Michael Roos, to "introduce the fundamental concept of the marketplacethat of strict accountability." He goes on to say:

120 123 The Unfinished Journey "1 hat means we need to be able to assess student achievement comprehensively to measure the results of school-site decisions the way any good marketer gathers data to gauge the success of his or her operation. And as the market system develops, schools will improve, not overnight, but steadily and surely. And as schools improve, we can give parents and students a meaningful choice among excellent schools."Los Angeles Daily News, 8/91

These ideas, however, were just a begin- : ning. LEARN then sought to establish a "Council of Trustees"a broad group of community leaders who would speak on behalf of a constituency in the city in support of the LEARN agenda. Eventually, close to 600 civic leaders of business, education, ethnic, labor, religious and social groups were asked to be "trustees", signing onto an initial vision and process. Seven task forces worked for almost 1c' ".7.t nine months to develop specific reform rec- 4 ommendations inthe following areas: school-to-work transition, school governance, accountability and assessment, professional development, facilities, parental / involvement, and social services. The composition of these were heavily negotiated, with teachers winning a major- A Los Angeles High School ity of slots on each committee. The administrators union had a set num- classroom ber of slots, while county departments, community based organizations and the PTA were also given slots. Given the divided relations within the district in which this was occuring, it took the power of LEARN as an external and influential convener to get people into the room together and even then it was with careful assurances about the balance and composition of the groups. The task force process was, by most reports, an intensive effort that operated by consensus and represented in the end an enormous amount of creative and collaborative thought and work. In substance, the outlines were farreaching: flexibility for local school site control, a heavy focus upon professional development and training, a broad definition of "stakeholders" which extended beyond the K-12 professionals, a call for the inclusion of multiple perspectives, resources and mechanisms to support indepth planning and collaboration, school linked services, and others. These were consolidated into a single slim document, For All Our Children, published in November 1992, with the following preamble: "We, the teachers, principals, classified staff, support services staff, students, parents, administrators and community members of Los Angeles believe that a quality education is the birthright of every child. Therefore, we must provide every child a rigorous educational program that meets the highest standards of educational excellence. We believe that our educational system can work for all children regardless of race, ethnic group, or economic circumstances and that the diversity of our students is a strength. Public education is clearly the number one priority of residents of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Comnumity Forces for Change 124 121 "We believe that the current system needs substantial and immediate restructuring to meet its main objectives of preparing students Given the divided for further education and the job market and civic involvement. The current structure of the system rather than any individual relations within the group is at the heart of our problems.

district in which this "We believe that schools alone cannot bring about significant changes in education performance.... There is wide sentiment that was occuring, it took all citizens, businesses, and social service agencies must do more to make public education work in Los Angeles. For Los Angeles to the power of LEARN improve the education of all students, the entire community must work together to support a district-wide school restructuring as an external and process. influential convener to "We believe that school improvement must be allowed to take get people into the place at the school. Each school must have the freedom to use its professional judgement and must feel personnally responsible for room together and its school's quality. even then it was with "We believe that all of our students will learn when our schools adopt clear education standards, strengthen their measures of careful assurances accountability, create an improved environment for learning and empower the entire school community. about the balance and "We want substantial and immediate restructuring of the rules composition of the governing eight primary functions of our schools: student learning and assessment; governance and accountability; educator develop- groups. ment; parent involvement; social services; school to work transi- tions; school facilities; and finance." The process of hammering consensus on the document was arduous, and often uncomfortable. Teachers were concerned that the power they'd been accorded through the site based mangagement agreement might be eroded. A group of civil rights advocacy organizations, concerned with a lack of specific focus on equity and access, formed a committee to review the document and propose changes. A different critique was from corporate leaders who voiced fears that educators couldn't be trusted with control of budgets. Says Mary Chambers: "This was the era of stormingnumerous groups would have walked out at various times and we had to keep pushing ourselves and each other to sit down at the table one more time and keep trying. This was not easy!" Almost every one at the table was convinced that things in the district were not working, and felt LEARN was the only ballgame in town with the potential for forging a solution to the crisis. Faced with the mounting pressure posed by the statewide voucher initiative, and increasingly serious proposals to break up the district, people banded together. The final document laid out a plan and process for proceeding. Con- fronting the challenges of one of the largest school districts in the nation, LEARN called for transferring budget authority and decision making regarding staff selection and teaching methods to the school sites. The

122 125 The Unfinished Journey district's role would evolve, in LEARN's vision, from a bureaucracy that controls into a system that nurtures and facilitates school level reform. It would be a market-driven central district, with services surviving only if schools found them useful. In this vision of a new relationship between the central office and schools, the central office would concentrate on asking "how can we support and encolixage risjk taking?" The enormous political clout and momentum of LEARN eclipsed and in many ways replaced the school based management process which had been forged through contract negotitions between the district office and the union. While most of the central reform ideas in the LEARN agenda were being embraced by change oriented school sites, one notice- able difference between LEARN's plan and the union negotiated site based management was in the degree of authority granted to teachers. Under the LEARN process, following a CEO business model, the princi- palnot the faculty or site councilhave the ultimate authority at a school site. But it is a form of principal leadership that calls for consensus building and working with all stakeholders in the school: "LEARN recommends that a collaborative, competent principal be the leader charged with making school-level decisions and held accountable for school-level decisions. The Principal as ultimate decision maker, with decisions made in collaboration with all stakeholders." It is an accountability model that in the end holds Principals responsible. LEARN did not stop with the publication of their vision. In what they call the "ratification" process, LEARN collected 90,000 signatures on a petition to the School Board in support of adopting and implementing the LEARN plan. This was accompanied by a massive community education campaign including direct mail to Los Angeles households in multiple languages, trailers shown in all the movie houses in the city, and a bus tour around the city. Political pressures to break up the district made it clear that LAUSD and the Los Angeles community had to demonstrate there was hope of reforming its schools. When the vote came at the School Board, there was little choice but to accept it. One Board member challenged the LEARN supporters in the audience, "Where are you going to be tomorrow?" LEARN agreed to make its role raising the funds for the first year of training and support, and to continue to mobilize the community. The plan was adopted by a 7 - 0 vote with the promise of full district wide implementation within five years. The board member's question to LEARN supporters, "Where will you be tomorrow?", was an important one. It pushed the community to promise to stay involved in LEARN and do what they could to support the implementation process. Community people ask what they can individually do in support of reform, and the result has been many concrete offers of assistance as well as a beginning shift in political climate with regards to the schools. LEARN's approach of involving business sector and community leaders in the process from the start has paid off in the high degree of resources and support that are now being lent to the district reform efforts. The first phase of implementation is expected to cost about $3.3 million, all of which is to be raised privately. The full five-year implementation is expected to cost $60 million to spread the reforms throughout the district schools.

Community Forces for Change 1 2 6 BEST COPY AVAILIVILI 123 LEARN moved the dialogue from an educator based one to a community based one. But the tendency has been for the process to be most steered by the business sector (because its money and influence are crucial to the success of the reforms), educators and the central district. Now it becomes essential that the community and parents who were invited into the process not be shut out. Thirty-seven schools volunteered to be part of the LEARN pilot effort. These Phase One schools are given control over 85% of their budgets to determine spending priorities with consultation from the "stakeholders"teachers, parents, students and other school staff. They are receiving intensive management training and other forms of assistance. LEARN is devoting heavy resources to try to ensure that this first generation of schools, all middle or elementary, will be successful. Some teachers' union leaders voted against supporting the plan unless it incorporated teachers rights more fully, and some schools backed out. Teachers in the district's high schools angrily declined to participate in the LEARN effort, which they believe bypasses the teacher empowerment won through the contact negotiations for site based management. Almost from its inception, LEARN has stressed the importance of professional development and building capacity among schools. The infrastructure needed to support implementation is dependent upon several partner institutions: the combined strength of UCLA's Graduate Schools of Education and Management, the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, and a district QED (Quality Education Design) office for professional development. The 37 schools that are participating in LEARN Phase One spent the summer of 1993 in an intensive training academy for principals and lead teachers. Under the auspices of the UCLA Graduate Schools, the training focused upon using proven business practices to improve school management. This included nuts and bolts instruction on budgeting and facilitating effective meetings, analyzing leadership styles, management techniques, using spreadsheets, etc. This is essential training, and Los Angeles has been unusual in its recognition that restructuring demands such training and new skill development. But the schools are just beginning their work at reform; so too is the alliance of community interests that created and supported the LEARN agenda. As the implementation phase proceeds, there is danger that the strong community presence will not keep pace with the level of involvement of the business sector or that of educators. While the structure is underway to provide training, support and power to educators which enables them to carry out reforms, the challenge will be to put effort into organizing, training and supporting the parent and community voices which are so necessary to keep this a reform movement connected to the communities of the students. As Mary Chambers declared: "The plan is not the gospel, its just the beginning. It's not even the first step, yet. We are still putting on our shoes." Meanwhile, there are hundreds of other schools in Los Angeles some continuing business as usual, others seeking to make whole-school changes and restructuring reforms through other processes. There will be new schools added to the process, although it is still unclear whether the resources and support can be sustained for these next generations of schools. In a recent report to the Board of Education, Superintendent

124 The Unfinished Journey ill', UJ

Sidney Thompson declared that full, districtwide implementation of the LEARN school reform principles remain his highest priority. Clearly, LEARN has taken central stage.

Issues Both of these examples illustrate major community investment in school reform born out of a sense of crisis. In each of these cities, there is the desire to forge a community wide consensus about reform amid entrenched hostiliti..s. There are conflicting agendas, accompanied by intense and careful politicking by various sectors seeking to influence the schools. Yet these communities have managed to create a forum for dialogue and a circle of support for reform that closes some of the gaps between various stakeholders/groups. They are alliances rooted in a belief that the survival of their communities depends upon restructuring the schools. In Oakland, two community organizations initiated and staffed the process, indelibly shaping it by their commitments to equity. In Los Angeles, the process led by corporate aid political sectors has been crafted in language and analysis somewhat differently. Neither is rooted in teacher empowerment, but both have found it essential to try to forge supportive relationships with the teachers union as well as with the central district. In both cases, signficant political clout and resources were necessary to give legitimacy to the outside forces seeking to impact the schools. The essential drama has been that such diverse people with widely varying agendas came and stayed at a table together to claim the pablic's right to shape a schooling system for their city. Without strong and credi- bb: external leaders convening these forces, they would not have engaged -.with each other collaboratively. Underlying the work there has continued to be the kind of tension that in the absence of a forum for dialogue, has deadlocked the reform process wholly in many other communities. The voices and viewpoints within this tension might be outlined as followed:

Teachers: "We have the crucial professional knowledge. We are the ones who know how to teach. Let us use our knowledge in shaping schools. The obstacles we face include the conditions of society and the conditions of education. We have too many children in our classes, too little control over our schools to do what we believe w,.! should do, and too many of our students have needs that we -an not taa cannot alone begin to address. The answer wont Ole is more teacher control over our work, about mil mow more emphasis on putting our professional knowledge to work, more respect for us, increased resources to meet student needs, and more power at the school site. With- out placing us at the center of reform, schools will not have our expertise and a system will be designed which is unwork- able for us as teachers."

Community Forces for Change 128 125 BEST COPY AVAILABLE Parents and Community Groups from the Students' Communities: if "We are of the children. We are the key to a moral and ethical com- The essential drama has mitment to children, and we know what is best for our children. Our children's teachers do not come from our communities or our cultures, been that such diverse and they do not speak the languages of our homes. We can help them understand our children, and we have a right to expect that they believe people with widely our children can learn. The problem has been a corrupt system, racism, lack of commitment to our children, and ignorance about our communi- varying agendas came ties. Without us as forces in school reform, the schools will not know what our children need, they will not be held accountable for breaking and stayed at a table the patterns of racism and exclusion that have kept our communities outside for too long. The answer is accountability for equity, opening the together to claim the school doors to our communities, and giving us a rightful place in shaping the schools for our city." public's right to shape The corporate sector: a schooling system for "We are recipients of your students, fresh from your educational efforts. Your students are our workers of tomorrow. We understand their city. what the economy needs to be competitive and flourish, and we must demand schools that can fuel such an economy. We know what skills stu- 77 dents must have to be successful in the labor force. And we have the best understanding of management of institutions. The problem has been poor management, lack of change models, lack of accountability, and a school curriculum that doesn't prepare students for the labor force or the economy. The problem has been that the public schools aren't delivering graduates who can read and write and be productive workersand therefore it's not long before our quality of life goes the way of the dinosaur. The problem is excessive bureaucracy and intervention that cramps innovation. The answer is new skills in management, a stream- lined bureaucracy, accountability, a curriculum and school structure more tightly keyed to the needs of the economy, and more fully preparing students for the work world. The answer is applying free market forces to the reform of schools".

The dialogue between the representatives of these different agendas is essential and difficult. It is important to note that these are not equally powerful voices. Teachers have their unions and are present every day in the classrooms of schools. The corporate sector has tremendous political influence and money. Parents and community advocates are not present daily in the schools, are not organized and have little support to gain the skills or information to be powerful partners in the dialogue. An increasingly large number of parents are non-voters with no political clout or knowledge of how to work the system. The health and legitimacy of dialogue and partnership between these sectors is dependent upon a greatly strengthened respect for the importance of all voices at the tableand upon building the structures for all to engage fully in the reform process. In those few cities where the dialogue is occuring with respect and commitment, there is still tension and apprehension. But it is lessening. No group is willing to be left out or left behind, because they believe that only a collective process can produce the schools and society we need. It requires a leap of faith and courage to cross old entrenched boundaries. It requires learning how to work through conflicts. It requires a willingness to challenge and to be challenged as each sector rethinks its roles and creates new ways of working together. 126 129 The Unfinished Journey Angela Glover Blackwell

Angela Glover Blackwell is the founder and Executive Director of the Urban Strategies Council in Oakland. The Council is a nonprofit public policy organization focused on reducing persistent urban poverty and creating economic opportunity for all. She is also the Co-Chair of the Commission for Positive Change in the Oakland Schools The Commission is a city-wide effort to develop an equitable school system that well serves all of Oakland's youth. The Commission's efforts to create a reform movement in the Oakland schools is one of the strongest examples of a community process in restructuring to date. As one of the visionaries and leaders of that movement, Angela Blackwell offers important perspective and commentary on the role of community groups and community members in taking responsibility and ownership of our public school system.

am MUM 1 30 128 The Unfinished Journey A Community Leader's Perspective: The Commission For Positive Change In The Oakland Schools

By Angela Glover Blackwell

he summer of 1989 was a horrible one for education in Oak- c, land, We were threatened with state trusteeship. We'd had no Superintendent since January of '89, and two finalists who were offered the job turned it down. Then The Tribune ran a series of articles about the crisis in the schools. Due to these events, community confidence in the schools was really at an all-time low. All of this came on the heels of a real high for the Urban Strategies Council in relationship to the schools, growing out of our work to save and improve the District's child development programs. That work started in January of '89, when we went before the School Board and asked if they would put confidence in us to come up with a plan to save and improve the child development programs at a time when the state was threatening to take them away. The School Board gave their nod. We did not charge the district and spent over $40,000 of our own money on consultants to try and put that plan together, working very closely with the School District and with parents. More than 400 people came out the night we presented the plan to the School Board. It was just an uplifting experience. The School District followed the recommendations and ended up not only turning the program around in terms of becoming fis- cally sound, but the quality improved. The Director of Early Childhood Programs for the state said the program had gone from being one of the worst in the state to being a model for the state. So, that all happened and concluded by around May of '89, and then we went into this terrible summer. Some parents and community people looked to us for assistance because they liked what we had done around the early childhood program. "Can't you do something about the whole school system?" "Why doesn't the Urban Strategies Council do something about this?" At the same time that this was happening, I had been serving with Sister Lois McGillivray from Holy Names as a co-convener of the Educa- tional Panel of the University-Oakland Metropolitan Forum. Here we were, an education panel with a citywide breadth of concern, and our schools were crumbling right before us. The Educational Panel, of course, was very concerned. What ought we be doing? So, there was pressure on the Council to build our work with the early childhood programs, pressure on the Educational Panel of the Uni- versity-Oakland Metropolitan Forum to do something about the crisis. I was sitting in both seats. We knew the community needed to take responsibility. There was a leadership void in the schools, and it was a perfect time for the community to step in. We needed to find people in the community who were respected, and who would be willing to become associated with an effort to try to improve the schools. And thus emerged the notion of the Commission for Positive Change in the Oak- land Public Schools. After that notion emerged, it was my task to meet with every single School Board member privately or in pairs, to say, "What would be your reaction to a commission in Oakland to champion improvement in the

First Person: Angela Glover Blackwell 131 129 id Oakland Public Schools?" There was a good response. Though I can't say that people thought it would help, they felt that it would be a good We did a bulletin thing to try. Then we faced putting the Commission together. How do you decide announcing that we which twenty people are going to be on a commission? No way would we satisfy everyone. However they got chosen, there would probably be were going to be flak associated with it. We decided somebody should take responsibility for doing it, and then that person would not be on the Commission so having meetings all that we wouldn't have to carry whatever baggage there was from startup throughout the life of the Commission. Ed Blakely took this on. over town, and we We wanted a broad community commission. We decided there would not be anybody employed by the schools on the Commission, because we did it in five different really wanted to be outside the School District. The School District was torn by different factions and loyalties, and we didn't want to end up in languages. the middle. While we received criticism for this decision from District employees, I believe it was a good decision. If I had to do it again, there are some things I would do differently. That is not one. That's how we started. Even though we started in response to a leadership and fiscal crisis and scandal, we quickly found out when we started talking to people in the community that that was not what was on their minds. What was on people's minds was that education in Oakland was failing our kids.

Hearing From The People Of Oakland The people of Oakland were really concerned about the education their children were receiving, and these had been longstanding concerns. After the early days, we didn't even make reference to the fact that there had been a scandal or a threatened trustee. Our focus turned to, "What is good education in Oakland?" And "What do we have to do as a community and as a school district to get it?" We were always very aware of the fact that the Commission for Posi- tive Change in the Oakland Public Schools had no formal authority. Therefore, we had to earn our credibility, and hold ourselves accountable. The first thing that we did was talk to the people of Oakland and ask them what they wanted. We made every effort that we could think of to reach people. We did a bulletin announcing that we were going to be having meetings all over town, and we did it in five different languages. We made 100,000 copies of this bulletin. We sent one home with every elementary school child. Junior high and high school students often don't carry things home, so we mailed them to their homes. We put them in check cashing centers and in the vestibules in churches for Sunday, and in grocery stores. The massive papering of the community let them know we were having these meetings and wanted to hear from people. A lot of time was devoted to planning for these meetings, asking how du we make sure that the meetings don't just turn into gripe sessions. We didn't want to go out and have an open mike and have people just tell us everything that was wrong. We wanted to have substantive dialogue with people about what is good education in Oakland. We wanted to establish a community vision.

132 1.30 The Unfinished Journey At the meetings, I always gave an opening talk to set a consistent id tone. Then we would break into small groups of no more than ten to fif- teen with facilitators and recorders to answer three questions: We acknowledged What do you want from the Oakland Public Schools? that we couldn't What are you willing to do for the Oakland Public Schools? and What does this process have to produce for you to feel it was solve the challenge worthwhile and not a waste of time? of good education The process was fun and we actually heard a lot of honest stuff. But we heard a lot of the same stuff. We were struck by the consistency. without dealing with These meetings informed the document published by the Commission, Good Education in Oakland: A Community Agenda for Positive the "everybody" Change. Though we've written much more informed and detailed documents, it is my favorite because it is just so real. It is what people said.. ail the people who And people liked it. Their names were all listed at the back. They could see that they were recognized and heard. And that was the way the Com- were the actors. mission set its agenda. The Commission went from being non-elected, non-appointed, non-asked, to being a representative for the community. We based our work on what we heard from the community. YI Having set the agenda, the next thing we had to do was get the facts and begin to work with people who have made a careereither paid or unpaid --of dealing with schools. We acknowledged that the Commission didn't discover the need to improve education in Oakland. There were lots of people who'd been working on school reform, and we wanted to respect them and involve them in the process. So we set up a series of panels, and these panels focused on schools in a larger community, administration, the teaching profession, facilities, etc. This turned out to be the hardest part. On every panel we had teachers, principals, other people who worked in the schools, we had parents and community advocates. We brought in everybody. And "everybody"really is the problem in one way or another. But we acknowledged that we couldn't solve the challenge of good education without dealing with the "everybody"all the people who were the actors. The panels were charged with developing the facts in their area. Fact finding was completed in May, and we had a day in which all of the panels came and presented their findings to each other. We went through a lot with the panels. Many people felt that it was too fast. Some thought that there was a hidden agenda, that often people did attempt to dominate it. All the issues that you would expect. But we got through it, you know, and that's the important thing. We got to the findings, and that day was terrific. From there we had people produce recommendations. By the time we finished we had 125 recommendations. But the panel process was very hard. It was successful in that it was completed. And I just want to underscore this: sometimes success is getting through something. There seemed to be many points along the way when any of us could have abandoned it, but we didn't. It was also successful in that the panels really came out with a very good array of findings. The recommendations, on the other hand, could have easily turned into a dog fight. We looked at all these scores of recommendations, and said: "We don't want what's been a very good process for the schools, to turn it into a fight over this little piece or that little piece." We didn't 133 First Person: Angela Glover Blacktve 131 want to give the District 125 recommendationsyou must do this, you must do that. Instead we chose to analyze the recommendations and ask, "What's underneath all these recommendations? What do they say about the strategies that need to be pursued?" Ultimately, the Commission chose to report the broad strategies that needed to be pursued, while respecting that the District has to make the changes. And so we came up with the seven strategies that are in Good Education in Oakland Strategies for Positive Change. While most of the strategies are aimed at the district, some were aimed at the community. Really, everybody has to change, everybody has to participate. We hoped that r+roducing the document would give the community ammunition it we -id need to ask the right questions and hold the District accountable.

Working With The District Cooperation from the district, however, was essential. From the very beginning, we had always had a close relationship with the Superinten- dent and many other people within the District. We started our work in September of 1989, and Pete Mesa was named Superintendent in Novem- ber of 1989. We thought, "Well, how are we going to approach this? He's a new superintendent coming in to the District. He doesn't know who we are. He wants to do his own thing." And then we said, "Let's just tell him who we are, and ask him who he is." And that's what our first meeting consisted of. We said, " We came to introduce ourselves. Let me tell you who I am." And it wasn't just where I went to school, but rather, "This is who I am." You know, "This is what motivates me. This is why I'm in this. This is what is important to me. These are experiences I've had." And we went through that, and then he told us who he was, going all the way back to being a sharecropper. By the time our first meeting was over, we really understood that we were people who were .cut from the same cloth in many ways in terms of our core values. That helped. He was named the Wednesday before TI- rnksgiving. We met with him the Satur- day after Thanksgiving, and met with him every Saturday until January, when he took over office. Then we started meeting every Friday until Good Education in Oakland: Strategies for Positive Change came out in September of '90. Not only were we meeting with the Superintendent, but we were meeting with lots of other people in the Superintendent's cabinet, so that we built a very close working relationship. In the year following the release of Strategies for Positive Change, we were very inside. Even though we had been very community in the process of developing the strategieswhen it came to implementing, we assumed the District had to implement. We wanted to make sure they understood what it was they had to implement, and that we were there to help them. So it was a very inside year. After the strategies came out, we widened our circle of district contacts, because we needed for people other than the Superintendent to understand what's meant by equity. And so in November 1990, we had a weekend retreat with the Superintendent, eighteen of his cabinet members, eight commissioners, and three School Board members. And we spent most of that time talking about equity. "What do we mean by equity?"

132 134 The Unfinished Journey It was a wonderful weekend retreat, quite special in the history of the Commission process. We realized at the end that we could never infuse equity in the District if people didn't have time to get away as we had. if That recognition led PG&E to make their Learning Center available so Our point of view that we could take a team from every school away for a retreat. We also worked with the unions and the School Board. I had frequent was that the schools meetings with the president of the teachers union. The School Board appointed a formal subcommittee consisting of three School Board mem- were not working. bers to meet with us once a month. And then there were just other school and community people who we were in very close contact with. We also They are mostly not had focus groups with organizations. We were very open and inclusive. But we were not there to be shaped. We had a point of view. working for low-income

A Strong Point Of View children of color. And Our point of view was that the schools were not working. They are we were about making mostly not working for low-income children of color. And we were about making the schools work for them. We made no apologies about that. We the schools work for didn't hide that agenda. But we wanted to make sure that we were not hiding it, and so we talked to everybody about it. We wanted to hear them. from everybody, but we came with a point of view. And that's very important. I think that all too often, as I have read about other commissions, that people come together because they want to improve the schools, but they're not really staffed by anybody who has a point of view. They hire a consultant, and the consultant tells them what to say. Our Commission was staffed by the Urban Strategies Council and the University-Oakland Metropolitan Forum. We agreed to staff the Commission because it was consistent with what we were aboutthe Forum trying to improve the general functioning of Oakland, and the Urban Strategies Council trying to improve the life options for poor children and poor families. And it was with that perspective that we staffed this effort. We talk about the issues in a certain way because we brought a point of view to it. When you allow a change effort to be staffed by somebody who comes with a point of view, you are going to see their point of view in it. But it's not just our point of view that resulted in the community agenda having an "equity" spin to it. It's not just that equity is very much what drives us here at the Urban Strategies Council. Oakland is a different community. Oakland is a very special city. Oakland is not just a community that has the demographic mix that is California. Oakland has real power in its demographic diversity, real power. People of color, the communities of color, in Oakland feel like they have power. There are so many people of color who not only hold positions of power, but exercise power over what actually happens. Oakland is a town in which the non-profit community sector can make things happen. And for that reason, the issues of interest to people of color, like equity, are very much on the screen. Even if a business group had done this report, I believe the document would have talked about equity. And so, part of the major focus on equity is we are a very special community, but part of it is Urban Strategies had a point of view and we didn't feel required to put that point of view on a back seat. We put it out there and we did not find rejection of it. We found a lot of embracing of it. 135 First Person: Angela Glover Blackwell 133 di The Follow-up Reports When you have an A year after the release of the strategies, the Commission did a one- year report back to the community. We felt it was important to tell peo- outside Commission ple there had been changes, yet we must never take our eyes off of the bottom line of improving education for children. That always had to be sometimes you're our measure of whether or not we're making progress. We put data out, showing the problems were still there, and we called it the bottom line. going to like what The other chapters in the report said, "Well, let's liken this to a massive ocean tanker changing direction. You can't do it on a dime. You have to they do, sometimes prepare. And this has been a year of preparation." We tried to give the district credit where credit was due, and to also acknowledge shortcom- you're not going to ings where shortcomings existed. The School District felt that it was too negative. The community felt that it was too positive. So it was probably like what they do. just right. Yet in many ways, it was a frustrating year. We got a lot of things going, but, all the internal problems of bureaucracy kept things from 77 being able to churn and move as fast as we wanted. The next year the Commission released a report on suspensions. It was prompted by the fact that progress was beginning to be made in the district, but lots of kids were still being cut out of the educational process through suspensions. Suspensions were very high. It said to us that this School District could improve, and still the children that we're most concerned would not feel the benefits because they were being excluded. So we sounded the alarm on suspension. This was the first report in which we actually named names, because we said, "Here are the schools that are doing very badly." We said there is a disproportionate impact on Black students, that here are some examples of schools that are doing a good job. Some schools (and school communities) felt betrayed. The timing turned out to be quite bad, and that was a mistake. It ended up being released the first week of school, and so the headline back to school story was about suspensions. A lot of School Board members were mad. A lot of the principals felt hurt. A lot of school people felt we had turned on them. We just talked it out, and said, "This is okay, because we've got to tell the truth. We've got to protect the kids who need protection most. We've got to force the issue. We've got to make people see that if equity means anything, it means creating opportunities for those kids who are in trouble and cause trouble. And we don't apologize. We won't back down. But we're here to help." We went out to multiple schools and had in-services with them about suspension, and helped them think of ways to do better. With a School Board member and Assemblyperson, we put together a hearing on suspensions. We published the results of that hearing, and got it back out to the community. And the District has reduced its suspension rate by about 30%. They really have done a good job. So, they were mad at us, but they got over it. They realized we weren't going away, and they understood that when you have an outside Commission sometimes you're going to like what they do, sometimes you're not going to like what they do. Because we're here for the kids. We're here for the outcomes. And that's what we're going to stay on. But that was a hard year. 136 134 The Unfinished Journey An Ongoing "Outsider" Role? This past year we have been the most quiet, partially because the Commission is rethinking its role. We knew what we were doing when we were putting together strategies for change. We knew what we were doing when we were reporting back that one year. When we did the suspension piece, it was an attempt to focus more in-depth on a single issue. We're doing another report that will be out in January on the school-parent partnership. But now, with a good educational plan in place, how do you make the District change when you're on the outside? You can highlight the issue. You can say "plan". You can help people plan. But ultimately, the work has to be done by those who are on the inside. We feel frustrated by the slow pace of change. The Commission is having a series of meetings right now analyzing its composition. It's been four years. We said we'd be around for five. We need to figure out where we're going to be a year from now. Do we think we can really go away? Do we need to reconstitute ourselves? Do we need to empower some other group to continue to play this role? Some people say we should have declared victory and gone away when all of our strategies successfully shaped the District's educational plan. That would have been an excellent time to declare victory. It seemed an impossible goal when we started. But once we got there, we weren't satisfied. We said we've got to hang with this through implementation. But when you're trying to influence implementation and you're on the outside, that's very hard. How can the Commission be effective in institutionalizing a community accountability mechanism that will hold this District to the goals it set out for itself, through changes in superintendents and School Board members. I think it is the next frontier. I'm pleased that we are stepping up to the challenge. I don't know what the answer will be, but I'm proud of the Commission for not backing away from trying to figure out how you continue to play this outside role, because I think it's important to play the outside role, but it's a delicate, tough role to play. Probably there will always be a need for a strong community force to he knowledgeable about the educational agenda, and to be advocates for the kids. I don't think that we can leave education to the insiders. The schools belong to the community. The children belong to the community. And we as a society have made a mistake by just letting school people do education. There are different roles to play. But I think there will probably always be a need for a Commission for Positive Change in the Oak- land Public Schools.

137 First Person: Angela Glover Blackwell 135 CHAPTER

SCHOOL-LINKED SERVICES: NURTURING A WHOLE CHILD AND FAMILY PERSPECTIVE

"What are the social, emotional, educational needs of students? Can they be separated? It was real obvious from the start that our school couldn't offer one kind of service without providing for the other."Bob Stein, CEO, O'Farrell School

Teaching and learning are disrupted when children are too hungry or too upset. Teaching and learning are impossible when students are absent. Teachers who care deeply about their students find themselves trying to make up for the lack of support services and personnel, trying to serve as both diagnostic and referral service, attempting to arrange for transportation to get students to a doctor and arrange for translators to help parents meet with lawyers. They are, by virtue of being teachers, thrust into trying to provide for the myriad needs presented by their students' lives. A quarter of the schools in our study were propelled to restructure largely out of concern about issues in the lives of their students that were preventing full participation and learning. The list of stressors was both long and familiar: violence in the community or in the home, drug addiction, alcoholism, unemployment, poverty, fear of deportation, family separation, early pregnancy, gang involvement. One third of the sites, including some of the one-quarter mentioned above, were attempting some type of sustained, deliberate and strategic initiative to meet the "nonacademic" needs of children and youth by working with outside human service agencies, either as part of their restructuring or separate from it. We conducted case studies of seven schools which had received Healthy Start funding: Paul Revere Elemen- tary School (San Francisco), Frank Paul Elementary School (Salinas), Vaughn Street Elementary (San Fernando), O'Farrell Community School (San Diego), Hawthorne Elementary School (Oakland), Wilson Academy of International Studies (San Diego) and Virginia Rocca Barton Elemen- tary School (Salinas). Several others were preparing to apply for Healthy Start. One school has a school-based health clinic. Another is implementing the Corner mental health model. Most of these were still in early stages of planning or implementation. We also found, with a couple of notable exceptions, that restructuring and these kinds of school-linked services initiatives appear to be largely disconnected efforts. While many schools have been able to encourage agencies to provide services on or near campus in response to referrals, in most schools, the agencies did not have a real role in the restructuring process or dialogue. They were service adjuncts, but not an integrated part of the school restructuring effort. Schooli estructuring has tremendous potential to create the conditions for schools to act on the understanding that simply attending to students' academic needs is not enough. Restructuring efforts can help

136 138 The Unfinished Journey teachers move from individual frustrations over a lack of services and supports for students to joint planning and action in the direction of solutions. But we found that this requires school staff and communities to spend intensive time together discussing barriers to teaching and learning, closely examining problems of school functioning, and most importantly learning about human services and how they can be integrated into their programs. Most schools have not reached this level of dialogue, much less the action stage for linking human services to their schools. Resources also play an important role in whether schools have reached this road: it was clear through our site visits that while some schools were benefiting from a number of programs and partnerships for meeting a fuller range of student needs, others had almost no help from outside resources. The ability to obtain these kinds of resources usually depended more upon the entrepreneurial skills of the administrator and staff than the level of need among the student population. The kind of inclusive dialogue that can lead to a comprehensive and appropriate array of services for children, youth and their families requires the widest possible range of caring voices. This includes parents, youth, community members, educators, school support staff, social workers, psychologists, health professionals and policy makers. Schools are the public institutions which have perhaps the most far-reaching contact with children and families; by virtue of their educational mission, they touch more children between the ages of five and eighteen than any other institution. Schools are also not generally associated with a negative stigma by families, at least not to the degree of some agencies such as child protective services or the juvenile courts. Consequently, there is a growing movement for educators to play a crucial role in linking children and families to a wide array of services and to work with other caring professionals to develop a more holistic approach to providing needed assistance. California Tomorrow has conducted extensive research and technical assistance in the development of school-linked and collaborative services, operating as a clearinghouse to communities and schools attempting these efforts. It was therefore of central interest to us in this study to look for schools that were building into their restructuring efforts mechanisms for supporting the non-academic needs of students in order to advance their possibilities for success in school.

The Benefits of Dissolving the Walls

"The walls here are tumbling down. We used to think of the school as separateour own little world here. It felt like maybe no one else out there cared about our kids or cared whether they got educated. Then when I started to be pressured by the district to take part in a collaborative with the health department, I felt like, 'Oh no, here's something else coming along the pike that is going to sap our energies away from teaching.' But the interesting thing is, though I was dragged in kicking and screaming, seduced in a way by what I thought might be some resources here at the school, I was surprised to find out that it really was interesting. They had a whole different take on kids." 139 School-Linked Services: Nurturing a Whole Child and Family Perspective 137 Schools in our study engaged in school-linked and multi-disciplinary approaches for working with children told us they were enjoying a number of important benefits from the efforts. These ranged from easier access to services for students, elimination of service duplication and fragmentation for families, less stigma felt by children and families utilizing services, school insights into other family-service disciplines, and better understanding and connectedness to the students' communities. Here we discuss some of these benefits more fully.

Easier Access to Services "This school refers a lot of kids to child protective services and the problems of their lives follow them into the classroom. You can't just offer educational services, yot- have to attend to other problems or a school just won't function."Marie Kelly, Grant writer, Paul Revere Elementary School Getting help and support to students more readily is viewed as one of the most critical benefits of linking services to schools. Often this increased access can have a direct impact on ensuring that a student is able to concentrate on his or her academics. For example, a teacher at one school noted that the on-site "family center," which provides medical and dental services, has benefited both students and teachers by min- imizing the amount of time students spend off campus. "In the past, kids would usually have to miss an entire day of school for a trip to the doctor or dentist and teachers would have to go back and re-explain a lesson. Now the child goes to the center and misses maybe 30 minutes of class and comes right back. They're not missing their lesson or homework and this helps the child feel more a part of the classroom."Candace Delgadillo, teacher, Vaughn Street Elementary In another school where there is now a school-based health clinic, the counselors are able to refer all crisis situations there rather than off-campus. The head of the Health Center said: I "I have never worked anywhere where I have felt so appreciated for my services."Rochelle Siegel, Overfelt High School For a decade, Hawthorne Elementary School in Oakland has sought services from local community organizations for students and families on an ad-hoc basis. Healthy Start (Senate Bill 620) funding created an opportunity to link services more strategically to the school on a larger scale. They have developed an on-site family support team which includes the school nurse, a drop-out coordinator (funded through Sen- ate Bill 65), an on-site case manager as well as outstationed workers from child protective services and mental health. Together with a community health center, La Clinica de la Raza, Hawthorne has established a satellite health clinic on campus. Dental services are also provided through the county health department. An early assessment of the dental program illustrates the crucial need for these services. Almost three quarters of the first 84 children examined had obvious dental treatment needs, compared to 40 percent for the same age children in the United States overall.

14 0 138 The Unfinished Journey Elimination of Duplicative Efforts, and Reducing Fragmentation of Services Under the current service delivery system, fragmentation of services is the norm. In most communities, programs designed 714 to help children and families address only specific needssuch as improving academic achievement, obtaining health services, or overcoming drug and alcohol abuse. These programs also tend to be crisis-oriented so that preventionis not emphasized. No one agency serves the "whole child", and there are few mechanisms for agencies and schools to work together to ensure that a child and his or her family are served in a comprehensive, meaningful way. Faced with such a complex and fragmented system of services, most families have difficulty getting the help they need. Low-income, minority and immigrant families who do not have the resources or knowledge of how to work through complex bureaucracies can be hurt most by this fragmented system. They are least likely to have telephones to use for the lengthy information gathering calls. They are least likely to have reliable means of transportation to travel from agency to agency. They are least likely to speak English which is the primary and often only language in which such information is available. Done well, school-linked service efforts may help with the process of identifying and eliminating unnecessary and sometimes harmful duplication of effort among the professionals seeking to help children and families. When school-linked services are developed out of a collaborative process involving the various school and agency players, it can offer professionals an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of how each one functions and where there may be potential areas of overlap. Elimi- nating this overlap is not only important because scarce resources need to be used more efficiently, it is crucial because it makes more sense for families. Frank Paul Elementary School and Virginia Rocca Barton School in the Alisal Union School district, which serves many migrant farmworker families, joined together in applying for a Healthy Start grant that would establish a service "cluster center" to be shared by both schools. The restructuring coordinator for Frank Paul gave an example of the critical need to coordinate services: "One of the things that the migrant liaison experienced recently shows the problem. She was bringing a family to six different agencies where the family was asked the exact same questions. If you know the Hispanic culture, you know that questions that relate to sex and pregnancy are very, very difficult for people to handle. To have to answer these questions six different times... it's the worst thing that could happen to them. It's no wonder that parents just say forget it, I'm not going to do this. And they don't get help for their kids."Jackie Munoz, Frank Paul

141 School-Linked Services: Nurturing a Whole Child and Family Perspective 139 && Less Stigma to Receiving Services In schools where services are universally available, a school-linked Human services services effort may be able to reduce the stigma sometimes associated with service programs and thus increase the chances that children and agency staff bring families are willing to use a program before a major crisis occurs. For example, at O'Farrell Middle School, the staff worked very hard to crucial perspectives to ensure that there is no stigma attached to visiting the Family Support Services wing. As one student reports: school staff seeking "No one looks down on "FSS" kids. Going to FSS is self-selective alternative strategies or teachers send you there. You have very understanding counselors there; they keep your business confidential, and you're con- for helping children fident that what's said won't leave the room." As a result, many students at O'Farrell will take it upon themselves and families. to make self-referrals to the program when they are in need of adult support. Similarly, the Vaughn Family Center and the Overfelt Health Cen- PP ter avoid stigmatizing the students and families who participate by allowing students and families to self-refer for services. At Vaughn, many of the services are ones which the parents requested as part of the program, such as exercise classes, English as a Second Language, workshops on legal matters, etc.

Perspectives of Different Disciplines Awareness of the sometimes very different perspectives of various disciplines is important to a school' staff's ability to understand student needs. Human services agency staff have been trained in disciplines such as public health and social work. This means they bring crucial perspectives to school staff seeking alternative strategies for helping children and families to resolve problems. For example, a social worker placed at three San Francisco schools as part of a project known as the School Partnerships Project, told us: "The key factor is being able to brainstorm with another person, particularly someone from another discipline. Teachers are in the education business. They see things in terms of learning skills. I see things in terms of family, community, coping skills and events in the child's life. Bringing these pieces together helps us both see the whole child." Human service providers can offer expertise in a wide range of areas, including assessing mental health conditions, diagnosing harmful medical conditions, and understanding the legal system and how it shapes the lives of many children. They are aware of eligibility requirements for various social services including Aid for Dependent Children and Medi-Cal. Working together, the adults in a child's life can create the fullest possible picture of his or her strengths and needs, and they can respond in a coordinated manner. This prevents the sending of confusing mixed messages to the child and the family. However, as we will discuss in our section on "Marrying the Disciplines," it is not easy building these kinds of partnerships and both sides have much to learn about working together on behalf of children and families.

140 142 The Unfinished Journey Connection to Community School staff and providers from large public agencies often do not reflect the racial, ethnic, class or language composition of the children, youth and families served. As a result, they can be ignorant of crucial aspects of children's lives, and may have difficulty seeing and working with parents and community members as full partners in a dialogue about student needs and appropriate services. Schools that build good relationships with service organizations rooted in the communities have a greater chance of bridging these gaps to the families served by the school. For example, at Hawthorne Elemen- tary School, Mujeres Latinas, a Latina organization emphasizing women's health, offers immigrant mothers an opportunity to join a parent support group where they can talk about such issues as reconciling two cultures and understanding the changes they are observing in their children. Too often schools or large agencies underestimate the crucial need for staff who can directly communicate with families in their native tongue. The most common practice is to use a translator, but in many cases this may not be enough. Conversations may involve specialized terms unfamiliar to a translator and the presence of a third person could inhibit a professional's ability to put the family at ease, particularly if confidential information is being sought. When translators are unavail- able, workers often turn to a child to help them communicate with parents. But this practice can be even more inappropriate. For example, for immigrant families, it can exacerbate an already stressful power imbal- ance where parents find themselves losing their authority. They are forced to rely upon their children who have adapted more quickly to the language and culture for information and assistance. In one instance, providers asked a youth to serve as a translator for a workshop on gang prevention only to later discover that the youth was a gang member and had given erroneous information. When school restructuring fosters an inclusive process that reaches out to community based organizations as well as public agencies, it can help to provide schools with the insights and the expertise needed to ground the effort in a deeper understanding of the community. Commu- nity-based organizations typically are located in the neighborhoods of the students and are more likely than schools or public agencies to hire staff from the community in part because they are not subject to the same rigid credentialing requirements which confine public agencies. Consequently, they more often have bilingual staff who speak the languages of the homes and, by virtue of their personal connections to the community, can recognize and understand the cultural context of a child's behavior and expectations. For schools that serve students from all over town, for example due to magnet programs or busing mandates, this connection to community becomes very challenging, as does reaching out to entire families versus just the children: 143

School-Linked Services: Nurturing a Whole Child and Family Perspective 141 "One of the problems of planning resources is that geographical- ly the school is separate. The basic model we are striving for is to bring services to the community rather than busing kids home late in order to let them be served here after school. But it is definitely a problem for a school that has students from all over." Marie Kelly, Paul Revere Elementary School

The Challenge of Marrying The School Restructuring and Human Service Reforms We clearly witnessed how the reform efforts have brought a renewed sense of hope to many schools and communities and generated some wonderful examples of good practice in meeting the non-educational needs of children, youth and families. We also saw a number of serious challenges to ensuring that the move to restructure schools and efforts to increase school-agency linkages are complementary and supportive of each other. As mentioned, we found most school restructuring and school-linked services initiatives working in disconnection of one another. This has occurred for a variety of reasons.

Crucial Philosophical Differences Schools are not alone in arriving at the conclusion that they need to work more closely with other agencies serving children and families nor have they gotten there in a vacuum. Human service reform efforts also focus on linking services to schools. However, differences in philosophy and impetus behind these parallelbut not necessarily complemen- tarymissions complicate the matter. While schools and human service agencies both agree that school- linked services are needed, their emphases often differ. Traditionally, human services have had a much broader mission and mandate around helping families, as compared to schools, whose primary mission is the education of children. Consequently, while education reform has focused on helping more students succeed academically, the movement in human service delivery reform is to work to serve more holistically the needs of whole families, including the children. Given the focus of schools on the academic well-being of students, educatorsparticularly classroom teachersare more likely to see school-linked services as a strategy for ful- Laiikii4=iiiiiirlaw filling the educational goal of ensuring students come to school ready to learn. In this context, linking services to school is seen as a way to lessen the load of teachers reducing the time they might otherwise spend struggling to deal with students' 51 non-academic problems and needs. Consequently, educatorsagain usually classroom teachersmay not consider it their responsibility to help build a collaborative support system for the family as a - whole. In most of the schools we visited, ,411)".. oar the regular classroom teachers appeared largely unaware of and uninvolved in plan-

142 144 The Unfinished Journey ning efforts aimed at creating a system of services for children and families. This kind of planning was largely left to the human services staff, student support staff (such as the SB65 drop-out coordinator, counselor At most schools, or school nurse), and sometimes the principal. Teachers only tended to become involved by referring students after the intervention had been school-linked services designed. The danger of this, in turn, is that the school-linked services operations are then easily left out of faculty discussions about the school and the restructuring restructuring processeven when the two initiatives will have an impact on each other. We found at most schools, the initiatives became frag- process lacked a mented and disjointed, lacking a common unifying vision. As one staff person in one such school exclaimed when questioned about the connec- common unifying tion between the initiatives: vision. "I didn't know there was any relationship between our school's I collaboration project and restructuring." PI Another contrast in institutional focus is that school staff often appeared to be frustrated with the slowness of the collaborative process, while agency people expected and believed the process needed long-term work. Many in human service reform believe that the key to success is getting agencies to take the time to re-think how their existing resources should be allocated on an on-going basis. For example, if a school has a large number of students who need immunizations, the goal of the school-linked service effort might be to see if the public health department could permanently shift some staff and materials for immunizations to the school site. What schools may not realize is that making such an arrangement on a permanent basis will probably require much more negotiation time than getting immunizations on a one-time basis. This represents a significant shift from typical entrepreneurial efforts to obtain resources on an ad hoc basis for students. As one school nurse said: "It's frustrating. Before I just used to go ahead and do it. Now the process is much more cumbersome. Agencies have restrictions." Similarly, while school reforms tend to emphasize teacher empowerment in making their schools better, recent human services reforms, including the movement for service integration, seek to address consumer responsiveness. Here the focus is more on giving the consumer of services a greater say in defining what kinds of supports they need, as well as giving the service provider flexibility to adapt services to those identified needs. In restructuring, teachers are looked to as having the training and expertise to know what needs to occur in the classroom to foster learning. Site based management and reevaluating the nature of the relationship between teachers and students are stressed. The teacher empowerment vs. consumer-driven tension is particularly evident in the involvement of parents. We did not see one site-based management plan in which the school governing body was majority parents as is the case in the Chicago reform effort. In many schools we visited, rather than earning respect for their close understanding of their children, parents were often viewed as inhibiting students' learning either because they lacked the resources to support their children or in the worst cases, having inadequate parenting skills. 145

School-Linked Services: Nurturing a Whole Child and Family Perspective 143 Meanwhile, numerous needs assessments comparing responses of service providers and teachers with those of families have revealed that the groups prioritize and define family needs differently. For example, while families often ask for emergency help such as food and rent, service providers and teachers may believe that parenting classes and drug/alcohol abuse prevention are most needed. Recognizing that families are unlikely to benefit from services that they do not want, reformers advocate that parents must play a role in defining the array of services that will be available to themselves and their community. While this shift in service provision is not taking place overnight, and still does not characterize most public agencies, it does appear that some parts of the service provider community are recognizing families as the ones with the expertise to know what will work best for them. Tensions can arise when school restructuring and a school-linked services effort are being implemented at the same school-site and they do not seem to share a common notion of who are the key decision-makers. In particular, we saw a situation where school site staff appeared taken aback when some parents, empowered by the school-linked service program, then wanted to have a greater say in the operations of the school and what was taught in the classroom. These parents think of their children more holistically, not seeing any "line" between education and other supports for their children's well-being that teachers and human service providers have been trained to see.

System vs. Site-Based Decision-Making While school site autonomy is the driving force behind restructuring, for school-linked services the action is more often at the district and county level. Not only is district support and cooperation essential for rule changes at the site level, but district level negotiations with human service agencies are necessary for systemic change to occur. Many schools have managed to negotiate satisfactory informal arrangements with community-based organizations and public agencies for services at their school sites. However, the Healthy Start initiative and the policy push for collaborative services has increased the number of these school requests to agencies whose resources are already spread too thin, particularly in this current era of budget cuts. From the city or county agency perspective, these requests for collaboration have presented confusion and frustration. In their view it makes much more sense to negotiate with the school district as opposed to having multiple conversations with school sites. Here is what one county agency representative told us: "Counties, to be able to be good collaborative partners, need districts to establish a central contact for their individual school's efforts so that one forum is created where county agencies can participate. County agencies don't have the resources to negotiate and collaborate with individual schools."Connie Roberts, Deputy Director, San Diego Department of Social Services Besides the logistical difficulties of negotiating deals with individual schools, there are also serious challenges related to equitable distribution of agency services across schools and counties. When agency staff and resources are parceled out on a case by case basis, system-wide equity is unlikely. The "early birds," those schools that are hustlers and have the

144 146 The Unfinished Journey inside track on information, often are the ones which are able to garner the services of public agencies.

The Impact of Budget Cuts Recent budget cuts and the question of how to parcel out scarce resources have had a dramatic impact on the ability of human service agencies and schools to execute collaborative programs. Budget cuts mean that public agencies have fewer staff and resources to contribute to new ventures, particularly activities which would take staff away from providing services targeted at a mandated population. They simply do not have sufficient staff to place line workers at all the schools that are asking for help in addressing at least some of the non-academic needs of their students. While budget shortagesmight be viewed as an excellent impetus for schools and agencies to consolidate resources, this is not typically how reality plays out. In recent years, the budgets of community mental health and health programs have been drastically hard hit. These community based organizations can be important links to immigrant and ethnic minority families. _.....111153111g But for these agencies, budget cuts reduce actual staff time and also create a climate kft of fiscal austerity where "discretionary"la activities cease to be organizational priorities. Consequently it becomes even less likely that these organizations will feel they can free any staff to come to meetings for the planning and coordination that is so essential in school-linked services. A student support group held Meanwhile, cuts in school personnel are fueling the sense of urgency at the on-site family center. to bring in supports from outside agencies. In many of the schools in this study, budget cuts resulted in lay offs of key school pupil personnel such as school nurses, school counselors or others designated with the responsibility for meeting the non-academic needs of students. Ironically, these are often the same individuals who have acted or could act as crucial supports for integrating the school linked services and outside agency personnel into the life of the school. Hawthorne Elementary School in Oakland demonstrates the importance of maintaining pupil support personnel. The school nurse and the drop-out coordinator have served as critical bridges between the on-site clinic, the educational program and outside agencies. They have been able to play this role because they are members of the school site management team, central to the decision making and information flow of the school, and have been kept on full-time even in times of economic hardship. They are in constant contact with school staff, relocated agency personnel and children and families. Fully aware of the wide range of activities, they play a critical role in connecting disparate efforts, keeping families and teachers aware of available services, and helping the relocated agency staff become oriented to the operations and culture of the school. At one of the urban high schools we visited, cuts in pupil personnel have resulted in a serious overburdening of the outside agency that was 147 School-Linked Services: Nurturing a Whole Child and Family Perspective 145 di relocated to the school site. The fiscal cuts have eliminated counselors who used to be primarily responsible for helping students with personal While budget shortages problems and referring them to an innovative health clinic on site. In the absence of the counselors who could meet with students one-on-one, stu- might be viewed as an dents now learn about or are referred to the clinic by teachers. But this has resulted in referrals occurring on a far more ad hoc and informal excellent impetus for basis as teachers happen to hear about a student's need for health services. The school is finding the system is far from satisfactory, with many schools and agencies to more students falling through the cracks. With fewer counselors available in the school, the clinic has also ended up with responsibility for all consolidate resources, crisis situationsthe one physical place on campus that is staffed during the day to intervene in emergencies. this is not typically how While most school support staff we met with welcomed help from outside agency staff, budget and personnel cuts present tensions to these reality plays out. relationships. With the layoffs of school counselors, nurses, psychologists and social workers, unions are growing extremely nervous. In districts around the state, murmurs of fear and resentment are rising. As one coordinator from a district collaborative explained: "Some school support staff are concerned that they may be replaced by cheaper, non-union subcontractors. For example, counselors may feel they will be replaced by social workers from community-based organizations while school nurses may feel they will be replaced by outstationed primary care clinic personnel. This is a labor issue which must be addressed in the current demoralized climate, and there is a need to bring community- based organizations and schools together to clearly delineate role and function of their respective employees in an integrated service model."Pam Wagner, Los Angeles Unified School District When school support staff feel secure, they Jo not worry about being replaced by outside agency representatives. In this time of scarce resources, however, this is often not the case.

The Governance Challenge When an agency person is positioned at a school site, it is often unclear to whom that person should report. Given that principals typically are accountable for events on campus, school staff tend to assume that the agency representative will report to the principalat least while they are on campus. But agency staff are much more likely to assume that they work for their line supervisors back in their home agencies. Or in a third scenario, neither the principal or the line supervisor may feel responsible for the outstationed staff worker, so that the worker suffers from a lack of administrative support and oversight. Because agency staff are so often left out of school decision-making structures, they are inadvertently excluded from important discussions and decisions even when they are directly affected. As a coordinator of a school based clinic said, "We don't have very much choice in the deci- ions that are made." Sometimes school staff even "forget" about school linked services staff, since they are employed by a different agency, are separately funded, and are not always available when meetings arise or even for informal communications. At one site, an outstationed social worker showed up one morning only to find the building was closedno one had bothered to tell her it was a school holiday.

146 14R The Unfinished Tourney Meanwhile, agencies too may not see it as the duty of outstationed staff to devote time to anything but the delivery of services to clients. Clarification of roles, and open conversations about institutional constraints and mandates become an important prelude to effective school linked services. When school-linked services and a school's overall restructuring plan proceed on somewhat separate tracks, school communities typically lack an overall picture that will allow them to figure out how meetings and planning activities can be coordinated or integrated more effectively. Schools and agencies do not operate on the same schedule each day: schools are open from 7:30 to 3:30, agencies work from 9 to 5. Within the overlapping windows, there are competing priorities for scarce time. Many schools, including several in our study, are involved in multiple reform initiatives. In restructuring schools, school linked services may be just one among several new reforms being tried, each with its own demands. Those which require extensive collaboration (such as school linked services) are particularly difficult to fit in given the lack of a school structure that might allow for sustained meeting time. Over and over again, we heard from school staff, agency representatives and parents about how time-consuming and exhausting working on any one initiative was. How much more difficult it is, then, to find time and energy to devote to a second or third, no matter how worthy. As one restructuring coach told us: "It's not the district's fault that there was not more representation from our school on the SB 620 (Healthy Start) collaboration. We were just too busy with 1274 and restructuring." Whatever the reason for the lack of connection between reform initiatives, it can result in serious problems. For example, if a school-linked service project develops a service referral process for students without taking into account a new student advisory period that has been created by the school, a crucial mechanism may be missed for identifying children most in need of prevention services. Meanwhile, the teachers/advisors may not take best advantage of outside resources to help their students with problems that may be preventing learning and school participation. Linkages between reform efforts are essential to ensuring that the adults who are influential in the lives of individual children do not confuse matters through contradictions. Some schools are looking for innovative ways to make sure that students themselves see the interconnectedness of the full range of supports available to them. For instance, a curricular unit may encourage students to understand the positive purpose of mental health services on campus. This might involve students interviewing the out-stationed social worker within an oral history project of the entire school. Students could also conduct tours of the school site for families, including the health/mental health center, thereby reinforcing the center's belonging to the whole school.

The Absence of Cross-Training One of the impediments to the development and implementation of effective school-linked service programs is they often appear to underestimate the need and importance of ensuring all staff (school and human service staff) have a chance to teach each other about their particular dis- 149 School-Linked Services: Nurturing a Whole Child and Family Perspective 147 ciplinary perspective and gain an in-depth understanding of how their respective programs operate. While the Vaughn Street Elementary School Family Center was still developing, it had begun to provide a range of services to families including health care, classes for parents ranging from English as a Second Language to aerobics, and legal aid. A strategic partnership with a local non-profit organization, Hathaway Children's Services, had provided Vaughn access to additional services: in-home support services to families and mental health therapy. The difficulties that arose there because of difference in organizational perspective can be traced directly to the restrictions placed on agencies by their funding sources, particularly monies that flowed from a federal or state categorical program. When Hathaway Children's Services first began working with Vaughn, they were funded by Short Doyle Medicaid, California's program for regulating Medicaid reimbursement to counties for mental health services. Short-Doyle required Hathaway to follow federal and state regulations, including opening a file and obtaining extensive paperwork on each client before even beginning services. Without this documentation, Hathaway could not be reimbursed for service units provided to families. But Hathaway staff quickly realized that this conflicted with Vaughn's philosophy of user-friendly servicesthat families needed to first believe the center was for their benefit before a deluge of personal questions should be imposed. So the agency took a significant financial risk, deciding to go ahead and begin working with families, taking a loss on reimbursement from Short-Doyle until the necessary documentation could be obtained. After the social worker built trust with the clients through a series of group meetings and individual visits, she gradually was able to compile this paperwork. While this strategy worked, it placed Hathaway under significant pressure during the start-up phase of the project. The agency lost money for the units that were not billed, putting its contract renewal at risk as it is needed to fulfill a certain quota. Other agency staff had to work harder than usual to make up for Hathaway's unbilled units. Finally, because Short-Doyle tracks services provided by each worker, the outstationed worker placed her own job at risk because her performance records indicated she was not billing enough units. Meanwhile, the school site workers involved in the project were unaware at first of the Short-Doyle funding requirements, leading to mis- understandings. For instance, when the outstationed social worker went on vacation, the school asked Hathaway for a substitute to assure continuity of care. In a school setting, of course, hiring substitutes on short notice is standard, simple and considered reasonable. For the Hathaway agency, however, it was a very difficult proposition. Finding a temporary worker with appropriate credentials was not possible; other case workers could not temporarily drop their own client loads to provide services to Vaughn families. From a clinical perspective, Hathaway was also concerned that a substitute could interfere with the bond developed between the regular outstationed worker and the families at Vaughn Street Ele- mentary School. Open discussions about Hathaway's funding restrictions eventually helped solve these problems by enabling the Center to plan ahead for therapist's absences with backup program activities.

148 150 The Unfinished Journey Later, a staffing shortage at Hathaway caused the partners to cease id providing the mental health services funded by Short Doyle. They turned their focus to the development of in-home services for Vaughn families In some schools, which are supported by less restrictive sources of funding. Nonetheless, Lyn Kobosa-Munro, the acting director of Hathaway Children's services, misunderstanding believes that the strong collaborative partnership which has been built through this experience may eventually allow the partners to again pur- about what is and is sue Short Doyle funding. During the next go around, however, they will have much clearer expectations about the challenges entailed. not an appropriate Another issue that frequently arises is the confusion and miscommuni- cations around pulling students out of class in order to attend sessions referral has meant designed to meet non-academic needs such as a student support group or a counseling session. Teachers, committed to educational achievement and students who did mastery of a curriculum, are often desperate to protect uninterrupted class time. When they don't understand a particular child's need for a service, need help were not any "disruption" from service providers is viewed as just that. Agency staff who are not in communication with teachers, don't have the essen- getting it. tial information needed about when it may be more permissible and when it is a major disruption of student learning to pull a child from class. 77 Where case managers view the school solely in terms of a convenient site for scheduling and reaching clients, little thought is given to the mission and structure of the school. Significant tensions over this had developed at a number of our case study schools. What is needed is a shared commitment to the whole childwhere the educator is committed to the need for health and mental health services for children, and where agency staff are committed to academic achievement and growth. And, where both understand the constraints of each other's worlds. Conversely, problems frequently arise because teachers do not fully understand the criteria for referring a child for services. On one hand, this can create needless overwhelming of the agency representative with referralsmany of which could be more appropriately handled by the teacher. "When I first arrived, we primarily spent the day intervening in crisis situations. Part of the problem was we had not fully developed our referral process. Teachers would send students to the center with notes written on scraps of paper and index cards. This year, it is very different. Teachers must give us a reason and show that they have taken several steps to address the situation first." In some schools, misunderstanding about what is and is not an appropriate referral has meant students who did need help were not getting it. For example, at one school, a community-based agency wanted to offer support services to families with children potentially at risk of being placed into foster care. The goal was to help families before their problems reached crisis level. In the past, the community-based organization had been accustomed to informally handling a small but steady flow of referrals from the school. But after the new process was "formalized," all referrals from the school ceased because staff misunderstood the criteria. While the agency was still interested in serving a broad range of families, the school staff mistakenly thought they now should only be referring those who had serious problems. Teachers also believed that they 151

School-Linked Services: Nurturing a Whole Child and Family Perspective 149 had to make contact with the families first. Because the school could not persuade families who were in real crisis to work with the community- based organization, they ceased making referrals. Eventually, this problem was resolved by an open dialogue among the staff of the community agency and the school. When referral criteria have not been fully thought out or communicated, students may be inappropriately identified for services. A not- infrequent pattern in school-linked services programs is for Latino and African American males to be overrepresented while girls of all ethnic backgrounds and Asian males are underrepresented. Often this reflects a two-fold problem. First, students exhibiting wl-at their teachers perceive to be disruptive behaviors may be referred to school-linked services when, in fact, other kinds of help may be appropriate, e.g. a rethinking of the appropriateness of the educational program. At the same time, some students truly in need of emotional or other nonacademic help may exhibit this by withdrawing. But these students are often the most likely to be overlooked by teachers. Working our an appropriate referral process requires extensive discussion among both teachers and service providers about the process and how to avoid unintended bias.

When School-Linked Services and Restructuring Are Linked Despite these challenges, one school in our study seemed to more effectively merge school restructuring with school-linked services. The profile of O'Farrell Middle School following this chapter provides useful insights. Also, two of the districts we visited, San Diego and Oakland,

Drawing by Rogelio Iglesias, Carr Intermediate School, Santa Ana

150 152 The Unfinished Journey had made school-linked services an integral part of restructuring plans. For example, in Oakland Unified School District, the concept of meeting a child's life circumstances is threaded throughout the district's overall restructuring plan, at least in theory. As part of this effort, the school district in collaboration with the non-profit Urban Strategies Council and county agencies joined forces to design and implement a strategy for linking needed services to schools. The first step in this Oakland effort was conducting a data match which documented the extent to which children in eight schools were known to nineteen different health and human service agencies. This data match demonstrated the crucial need for agencies and schools to work together to ensure that children and youth receive the services they need in a coordinated manner. According to this data match, two thirds of all students were known to at least one human services agency, and almost a third had used two or more. The children known to the most crisis oriented programs were the ones least likely to be regularly attending school and who had the lowest grade point averages. Yet while these students were known to multiple agencies, minimal communication was occurring between the agency and school staff who had contact with the same child. The data match revealed significant differences in the way services are made available and used along ethnic/racial lines. For example, Latino students were less likely to be users of any type of service than were any other ethnic group. Project staff surmised that part of the reason may be that many Latino stude is are undocumented and thus hesitant or ineligible to use services. The match also showed that Asian immigrant students showed a somewhat higher rate of service use, while African American and white families used crisis services more often than did other population groups. Crucially, the data match showed that more community resources are devoted to crisis responses than to prevention and maintenance support. This effort laid the groundwork for the development of a district wide strategy of school-linked services which includes model on-site cross- agency teams at two pilot school sites and support for planning efforts at a larger number of schools. One of the exciting potential outcomes of the growing interest in school-linked services by educators and social service providers is the creation of a more unified voice for children and families. Although budget cuts and perceived competition between education and human services have created some rifts, school-linked service programs offer them a chance to learn about each other and engage in a dialogue about how they can work together to meet the needs of children and families. In this time of fiscal crisis, this unified voice is needed more than ever.

153

School-Linked Services: Nurturing a Whole Child and Family Perspective 151 Strategies For Developing Effective School-Linked Services

Conduct an assessment of children and family needs and community resources which includes an analysis of the current array of supports and services available through the school, non-profit agencies, public agencies and families. The assessment of school resources should encompass existing pupil support services such as student study teams, school social workers, the SB 65 coordinator; etc. When conducting the assessment of needs and resources, be sure to analyze the availability and appropriateness of services for the various ethnic and linguistic groups present in the school community. Create forums for school staff, parent, and service providers where participants can discuss how supports and resources need to be reconfigured or generated and develop criteria for identifying students and families who would benefit most from the available services. Involve community based organizations which serve the communities in which students live and offer critical insights about how to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services. Engage classroom teachersnot just pupil support staff and administratorsin the development of the school-linked services component. Provide time for school staff and service providers to learn about each other's skills, strengths, limitations and underlying philosophies and discuss how they can best work in partnership with each other. Make sure the various school and school-linked efforts to reach out to families are coordinated and build upon each other. Design the school-linked service component so that it is integrated with pupil support services and is linked to school restructuring decision- making processes and forums. Find ways to reward service providers, teachers and administrators and parents for working collaboratively.

UST Ofitatiti 154 152 The Unfinished Journey SCHOOL PROFILE

O'Farrell Community School: Collaboration in Action

"Dream with me if you Can you see a school that children want to go to, that teachers want to go to, that parents want to go to, where teachers work closely together to provide the best education possible for all kids, where students succeed academically, where adults and children work closely together, where people smile, where the feeling is warm and the environment is safe, where decisions made about children are shared decisions, where responsibility is shared, where creativity is high, where gender and race are just part of your uniqueness and not a barrier to learning, where there is an extended family of teacher, family, community, agency, where classrooms are exciting places to be, where teachers are turned on to teaching, where students are the number one concern."Bob Stein, Chief Executive Officer, O'Farrell Middle School

ocated at the top of hill in the heart of the San Diego City School District, O'Farrell Community School: Center for Aavanced Acade- mic Studies serves a combined total of 1,395 sixth, seventh and eighth grade students. O'Farrell's diverse student population is 35 percent Filipino and Pacific Islander, 5.1 percent Indochinese, 16.2 percent Latino, 36 percent African American, and 7.8 percent White. It is the first restructured, neighborhood-based, middle level magnet school in the San Diego City Schools where the vision and the instructional program have from the beginning been jointly developed by administrators, teachers, and community members. An underlying premise of the O'Farrell philosophy is that meeting the social and emotional needs of students is essential to academic learning. The school's Family Support Services Wing offers services on site or referrals to a multitude of resources such as health clinics, gang intervention, parenting support, drug and alcohol counseling, employment training and tutoring. Opened on September 4, 1990, O'Farrell Community School presents a markedly different picture from the educational program originally housed in its current facilities. Prior to O'Farrell's opening, the school had been a performing arts magnet attended primarily by non-res- ident White students and a small minority of African American students. At that time, children in the neighborhood had been forced to go outside the community for school. Bob Stein, O'Farrell's Chief Executive Officer, explains the previous program was an illustration of inequitable funding patterns which disproportionately invested resources in the education of middle class, typically White children. Eventually, however, the performing arts program was moved and the facilities were left vacant until the school was reopened as O'Farrell Community School. This O'Farrell, is built on the philosophy that all children should be engaged in an enriched academic program. 155 154 The Unfinished journey Immediately after the San Diego Board of Education approved the re- opening of O'Farrell as a restructured magnet in December of 1988, the district pulled together a panel of teachers who eventually selected Bob Stein to be the head administrator. A major criteria for his selection was knowledge and commitment to a process of restructuring with an emphases on shared decision-making. As soon as Stein was hired, the district announced openings for approximately 20 teacher positions. Only 11 from the district applied. According to one of the original teachers, Byron King: "Staffing the school was difficult. Many teachers were worried about the neighborhood where it is located and had a hard time with the ambiguity of being hired for a school that didn't yet exist. There's not a lot of teachers who are acculturated to be risk takers, though they could be." Ultimately, the interview committee, which included staff from social service agencies and parents, selected seven teachers. With this original team in place, the nearly year and a half of planning which would pre- cede opening O'Farrell's doors to students could begin in earnest. Sup- port for this planning phase was provided by a combination of district resources and contributions from the Stuart and Panasonic Foundations.

The O'Farrell Program Today each O'Farrell student is a member of one of nine educational families comprised of 6 teachers and approximately 150 students. Stu- dents are heterogeneously mixed so that each family is balanced by race and gender and includes children of all ability levels. Six families are comprised of 7th and 8th graders and 3 families only include 6th graders. Each team of teachers is jointly responsible for covering the core curriculum comprised of linked subject areas Humanities (language arts and social studies), Technics (mathematics, science, and computers) and Physical Education. In an effort to increase contact between students and teachers, all of the sixth grade families have further subdivided into two groups of 75 students taught by teams of three teachers. Conse- quently, while 7th and 8th grade students tend to have different teachers for different components of the core curriculum, sixth graders often are taught about several subject areas by the ie 4-1 01 same teacher. 4 In keeping with the commitment to addressing the social and emotional needs of students, an important part of the O'Farrell program is the home-base classroom where each student spends the first twenty-five minutes and the last ten minutes of the school day. The home-base teacher, who is one of the six teachers who comprise the student's educational family, acts as his or her primary adult advocate. A central focus and responsibility of the home-base classroom is instilling within each student the values expressed in the

School Profile: O'Farrell Community School 156 155 BEST COPY AVAILARIE school's guiding statement, "The O'Farrell Way" which says: We believe in a just and fair process of learning. Therefore all students and adults at O'Farrell are expected to: 1. Focus on learning and be prepared to learn. 2. Respect the rights of others to learn and to study. 3. Be kind to yourself and others. 4. Show respect for property. 5. Behave safely and have regard for the safety of others.

Home-base activities focus on organization skills, decision-making, goal setting, problem solving, conflict resolution, crisis management skills and values clarification. The home-base teacher concept has completely replaced the use of counselors. In fact, during the initial planning phases, O'Farrell teachers agreed to assume counseling and administrative roles if the district allowed them to trade in those positions for additional teaching slots which could be used to lower the classroom ratios. Teacher Cindy Feeney explains, "Counseling is the biggest part of my job. I am a counselor, teacher, mother and friend (in that order). My home-base kids command the majority of my time, but it's important. Home-base allows me to be much closer to the kids. Many of the students face tremendous challenges... manyhave no one to depend on.. many come from families struggling with problems of drug addiction or alcoholism, incest, divorce or suicide, or the trials of foster care."

School-linked ServicesThe Family Support Services Wing Often, however, addressing the needs of the whole child in an integrated fashion requires the support and involvement of resources and individuals beyond the home base teacher. While students are attending their discovery classes, the faculty of each educational family frequently use this time for joint planning and for discussing the progress of specific students. This often includes the teachers inviting individual students in to talk out their problems. But even these teams of teachers are not expected to have the expertise or the time to meet all of the social and emotional needs of students. O'Farrell relies on its innovative "Family Support Services Wing" to make accessible a broad range of support services to the entire school. Occupying an entire wing of the school, the Family Support Services wing is adjacent to the health office and accessible from the interior of the school and the outside parking lot. As oon as students or family members walk through its front doors, they see a long counter covered with a multi-lingual assortment of pamphlets and flyers. These describe a wide array of community resources and activities ranging from child care, to self awareness and personal planning programs for teenage girls, to counseling services for Laotian and Filipino students. A room behind the front office area is used for support group meetings, comfortably fur- nished with chairs and couches. The Family Support Services Wing is staffed by a full-time coordinator, Mary Sk rabucha, who oversees two full-time and two part time advocates. Half the money for these positions comes from the Depart- ment of Social Services, and the rest comes from SB 620 Healthy Start

156 157 The Unfinished Journey and district money. Other positions include a full-time school psychologist, a two and a half day counselor, a 6 hour guidance aide, and an 80 percent time clerical person funded by SB 620 (who speaks Spanish) and Each month, all of a two day per week teaching assistant (who speaks Laotian). The district counselor deals with the School Attendance Review Board (SARB) and the agencies involved School Attendance Review Team (SART) process. The advocates are responsible for crisis intervention, short-term counseling, support groups in Family Support and working with the biological as well as educational families to make sure student needs are being met. Service have a meeting Mary Skrabucha is required by the Department of Social Services to recruit one new agency to work with O'Farrell each month. Currently, where they talk about the school already has relationships with nine agencies including the Center for Parent Involvement, the Barrio Station, Children Having Chil- how they can work dren, Union of Pan Asian Communities, and the Neighborhood Out- reach program. Services provided by these groups encompass gang inter- together. vention, crisis intervention, parenting skills and support, drop-in services, counseling, service learning opportunities, sexual responsibility workshops, drug and alcohol counseling, employment training, tutoring, parent involvement, etc. While some agencies provide services on site, others are connected through a referral process. Each month, all of the agencies involved in FSS have a meeting where they talk about how they can work together and help each other. Students can access FSS resources in a number of ways. Some self- refer by walking-in or by telling their home-base teacher that they would like to talk to someone at Family Support Services. Often, students are referred to the Family Suppoit Services by their educational families. Teachers typically begin the referral process by filling out a referral slip after they have found that they are unable to address the problem by themselves or with the help of the other teachers in their educational family. Mary Skrabucha believes that 60 percent of the time issues are resolved within the educational family which is generally considered the first line of intervention. In some cases, a staff member at the FSS ends up helping the teacher with the referral process and working with the educational family to work out an intervention plan. Coordinator, Mary Skrabucha, gives the following example, "A lot occurs on a case-by-case basis. For example, Mom calls FSS and says, 'I'm real concerned about my son. He's not eating or sleeping. Do you know his home room teacher? I then inquire whether anything significant has happened recently at home. Mom says, 'the house was recently broken into.' My next step is to go to the teachers to ask if anything appears to be wrong. One of the benefits of O'Farrell's family structure is I can speak to all of the teachers at the same time by attending their family meeting. I also speak with the student who explains that he is fearful about the robbers returning and that when the house was robbed his dog escaped from the house and was hit by a car. The child not only fears for his safety but has lost his best friend. I can then use this information to talk to the Mom and alert all of teachers of the situation."

158 School Profile: O'Farrell Community School 157 O'Farrell teachers are remarkably knowledgeable about the resources available in the Family Support Services wing because O'Farrell used SB 620 money to spend two days orienting the entire O'Farrell faculty to its operations. The retreat gave FSS staff an opportunity to inform the teachers about their areas of expertise and the agencies that should be providing services, and to work with the teachers to develop an effective referral process. Once a student has been referred to FSS, the case manager is responsible for working with the child and family to assess what are his or her needs and which resources are available to address his or her situation. The case manager also refers students to outside community based organizations, if necessary, and monitors the child's progress with the agency. If needed, the case manager will also provide short-term crisis intervention. Assessment and referral information on each student is stored within a Macintosh HyperCard data collection and monitoring system which was developed by a consultant who worked closely with the center director and staff to ensure it included the appropriate data elements. The system tracks all of the information required for the funds received from the County Department of Social Services. As a result, Mary Skrabucha has arranged to cease sending in paperwork to the county and instead meets auditing requirements by having county staff review client charts on the computer. The computer system is also designed to assure appropriate levels of confidentiality. While the director is able to see the files of all the family advocates, each advocate can only see information regarding children to whom they have been directly assigned. Moreover, after family advocates have entered information about a particular student, the system produces reports designed to keep teachers abreast of the status of a child without divulging confidential. information. Eventually, the plan is to hook the system for the center to the computer network currently being used by teachers. Planning for the school- wide data collection system began with the Family Support Service center and will eventually be operational for the entire faculty. Almost every teacher in O'Farrell currently has a Macintosh computer in their classroom. At this stage, an e-mail system already allows teachers to communicate with each other on a regular basis. At O'Farrell, a "Community Council" is the governing body responsible for making decisions about daily school operations. The Communi- ty Council is comprised of a majority of teachers (one for every family), one representative of classified staff, students (one per grade level) and five parents. Significantly, the coordinator of the Family Services Support Wing serves as an ex-officio member, along with the Chief Executive Officer and the Magnet and Chapterl/II Resource teachers. This broad representation on the Community Council contributes greatly to the school's mission to holistically work to ensure the health and success of all students.

159 158 The Unfinished Journey 1 ririhe restructuring movement is focused upon reforming many aspects of teaching and learning.

1 the reform of teaching and learning to be We elected for this report to discuss just four 1more exciting and effective, consistent with aspects of curriculum and pedagogy which are current research. The focus upon curriculum, ped- most central to the preparation of students for a agogy and student learning has been in the fore- diverse and complex 21st century. These four areas front of California school reform for a decade. are: student grouping, multicultural curriculum, Along with school restructuring, the state curricu- technology, and language issues for teaching lan- lum frameworks and grade level reform reports guage minority students. have blanketed the state, stimulating changes in We have chosen to highlight the exciting work schools from kindergarten through grade twelve. in some restructuring schools to address these Most schools engaged in this reform movement arc issues. However, the overall pattern we found in concerned with these issues. restructuring schools is that reforms are unfolding It is no accident that curriculum and pedagogy without an emphasis on the very aspects of cur- have become a lively arena of reform. In assessing riculum and pedagogy that the literature on effec- the status of student instruction in the nation's pub- tive schooling for language, cultural and racial lic schools, the National Coalition of Advocates for minorities advocate to be most essential. Relatively Students concluded in their publication The Good few schools are emphasizing multicultural curricu- Common School, that lectures, seatwork and quizzes lum or whole school anti-prejudice and human persist in dominating class time in most schools. relations efforts. Relatively few schools are attend- There is still short use of precisely the teaching ing to the needs of LEP students; almost none are strategies that most awaken student intereststu- working to affirm and develop the home languages dent presentations, group activities, field trips, inno- of their language minority students. Most are vative audio-visual communication, computer use, working on changing how students are grouped, or interchange with a broader community. Although and are succeeding in undoing previously harmful students learn best when schools make an effort to practices of tracking students by abilities. Many integrate their academic, social, emotional, cultural are creating more human scale learning communi- and physical growth, most public school instruction ties within schools. Yet the lack of understanding tends to focus exclusively on the acquisition of basic of specific needs of students (particularly limited academic skills. Much instruction is characterized English proficient students) is resulting in many by a narrow range of materials, inappropriate and cases in the creation of new barriers to access and inflexible teaching styles, rigid learning environ- learning. ments and little access to higher order skills devel- Every chapter in this section illustrates the opment or to a full multicultural curriculum. enormous challenge which restructuring schools In California, the restructuring movement has have taken on. It is hard to teach in new ways. It is generally sought to change many of these traditional difficult to absorb and implement new theories of approaches. As will be stressed in the chapters of learning. It is complex to design new schedules and thissection,California Tomorrow found the structures for grouping students. There is still con- restructuring movement to be generally research siderable confusion, and even ignorance that is based and knowledge hungry. One of the great hampering the direction of the movement. But resources the movement has been able to draw upon every chapter also illustrates that change is not is the explosion of research on teaching and learn- only possible, but is occuring. Each arena of cur- ing. We now know more than ever before about riculum and pedagogy that we explore in this sec- how the brain functions, how learning occurs, max- tion demonstrates that the success of restructuring imal conditions for learning and barriers to learn- will depend upon a major infusion of professional ing. And there is little question in most knowledge- development supports for educators, a strong able educators' minds that the patterns of student infrastructure of resource personnel and technical instruciton that have been the norm for decades are assistance, a deepened immersion in research neither appropriate nor effective any longer. about language and culture, and the provision of Restructuring schools are thus working on time and resources to make all of this possible.

1 g 1 161 CHAPTER 8

IN SEARCH OF NEW AND FLEXIBLE STUDENT GROUPINGS-KEY TO STUDENT LEARNING

prominent in the discussions of restructuring schools is how to group students for the most effective and beneficial learning. Most of the schools in our study were trying new configurations of students, such as mixed grade and language groups in elementary schools, "families" or "houses" in middle schools, and block scheduling or magnet programs based on students' career interests in high schools. One of the triumphs of the still young restructuring movement is that so many schools have taken to heart the research about the importance of de-tracking classes and creating smaller and more human scale groupings of students. The research has followed from the civil rights and student advocacy movements to rectify the shameful over-representation of African American and Latino students in lower tracked courses, compared to white students in college-prep and GATE tracks. There has been particular concern about the documented harmful effects of tracking students "homogeneously" into courses together with others of their same skills levels, and its impact on long-standing patterns of racial and class segregation and inequities. Many changes in student grouping are schools' direct responses to pressure from advo- 4.(,,, -, ' cater and recent research which has soundly -141111" challenged the traditional belief in the benefits ,A,J,.,, A of grouping homogeneously. Teachers have witnessed firsthand the general harm resulting to \4-- students of what has been a watered down cur- !: riculum, and the specific harm of tracking con- signing students to different futures. The separa- Aft.- tion of students by race that tracking has ----41---:" engendered is also now in disfavor as more k- - --_41,-- schools recognize the need to facilitate access for all students to a college preparatory program, and to build community and respect among groups of diverse students. Much of the current school reform literature Students working together at calls for attention to student grouping. All three of the California grade- Franklin High in Los Angeles level reform documents call for "heterogeneous" or mixed-ability groupings of students exposed to a high quality, common core curriculum. The California Business Roundtable's Restructuring California Education envisions the elimination of ability tracking of students. The California Education Summit reached consensus about the need to abandon remedial courses and tracking. A Return to Greatness, published by the Associ- ation of California School Administrators' Commission on Public School Administration and Leadership, urged smaller units of students to allow for greater individualized instruction and contact with adults. Not only California school reform is focusing on these kinds of changes. National school reform groups have embraced both the importance of heteroge- 162 162 The Unfinished Journey neous grouping, and the need for increased attention to creating a stronger sense of community within schools. For example, the Accelerat- ed Schools model calls for grouping students heterogeneously and the Coalition of Essential Schools advocates detracking and frequent regrouping of students.

In The Field Overall, there were five types of structural changes in student grouping that were most prevalent in schools we studied: de-tracking stable ability groups into heterogeneously mixed ones; deliberate grouping of students for purposes of racial, cultural and linguistic integration; family or house structures to create smaller groups of teachers and students; multi-grade classes to accommodate different students needs and promote learning; and career pathways to improve secondary students' career prospects. Reflecting the very different structures of elementary, middle and high schools, we found that concerns about student grouping, and approaches to new forms of grouping differed by grade level.

Elementary Schools Traditionally, public elementary schools have been organized into a rigid set of sequential grade levels. Students are expected to remain in each grade for a single school year, gain an expected set of skills and knowledge, and then move on to the next grade. Students who don't progress at the rate expected in that year, have been required to repeat the grade. In reality, children develop various skills at different rates. One child may be precocious in social development and in manipulative skills but slower in developing language skills. Every child has their own unique range of knowledge and abilities, exhibiting competence in some subjects while having trouble with others. Seldom is development in all areas the "norm" expected in a traditional grade level. Responding to this reality, increasing numbers of educators are turning to multigrade and multiage groupings to provide the flexibility students need to develop their multi- dimensions at their own rates. In a K-2 classroom, for example, children have the opportunity to group in a wide variety of ways with students of like interests and like skills at some times; with students they can teach at other times; and with students from whom they can learn at other times. The cross-age cooperation this fosters is one of the important pluses. More importantly students have the opportunities to experience themselves in teaching roles and in learning roles, withot the pressures of feeling they are somehow deficient in areas in which they need development. Furthermore, teachers are finding multigrade and multiage groupings important for breaking down barriers. Explained one teacher: "In schools, grade levels have attained the sanctity of being written in stone. When you enter into multi-grade groupings, it has the effect of opening the door to considering questioning other kinds of barriers and stone walls in how we structure schools. When you realize things don't have to be the way they always have been, when you begin to feel the excitement unleashed with the flexibility of multi-grade groupings, you start to think differently about teaching and learning." 163 In Search of New and Flexible Student GroupingsKey to Student Learning 163 At the Elementary Level:

Multi-grade classrooms Changing classroom (for at least part of the composition to meet school) language needs

As shown in the chart, just over one-half of the elementary schools we studied were instituting multi-grade classrooms, usually by beginning with a few classes. Mary Eriksen, a teacher at Hawthorne Elementary School in Oakland, explained: "The multi-graded classrooms grew out of the research literature and the teachers were just convinced it was the way to go for our kids. Part of the philosophy is that you need to have kids for two years with a teacher. The continuity, the stability, the consistency really pay off. The teacher can know the kids in more depth. The older kids can teach the younger. This is important to us at Hawthorne. Life is such that you need to learn to live cooperatively, with all of us learning from and teaching each other. To us, it's part of building a better world." While the formal rationale for regrouping in most schools may be rooted in developmental theory, in some cases, the move to multi-graded groupings or combination classes was based upon financial and enrollment realities. A number of schools created combination grades, not necessarily out of a desire for some new outcome, but because of the need to fill every 11:411. class to capacity. One small rural school with very few students overall combines tianwp..r retzu grade levels in the following way: K-1, 2-4

YN 0 and 5-8. Their discovery of the research on multi-grade combinations and integrated team teaching convinced them to push the parameters further by mixing the K-1 and 2-4 classrooms together for special projects, in order to encourage more cross-age and cooperative work. But a shift to multi-graded and multiage groupings calls for new skills and teaching approaches. One teacher expressed her sense of overwhelm and unpreparedness for all this entails:

164 164 The Unfinished Journey "It wasn't my choice to have a multi-graded classroom. It's an extra burden forced upon us because of the need to get the numbers right. Teaching two different grade levels is difficult. The spread of skills and abilities (including language differences) within one grade level is already extremely wide in our school. When you have two levels together I really worry about reaching the children on the extreme ends. They often don't get a clear sequence. They get fourth grade stuff when they should be getting fifth grade stuff. 1 have more fourth graders than fifth graders, so I teach more to the fourth grade level. Then next year, they may all move on to a teacher who targets more the sixth grade level, and thus the fifth grade curricula( 'stepping stones' were missed. This is in fact occurring with my class." Multi-grade combinations are being found to be important for schools with A newly arrived immigrant students. Arriving from different national schooling systems, and often with interrupted prior schooling, I the flexibility of multi-grade groupings allows them to address gaps in prior skills and knowledge, accelerate at their own rates, and still develop strong peer relations with a diversity of classmates. Concerns about flexibility to accommodate student development is just one of the driving forces behind new efforts in student grouping. Some schools are designing programs which capitalize on what students have to teach each other, and which seek to affect the power relations among language and racial/ethnic groups. Two schools in our study were Dual Language or Language Immer- sion, grouping English-only speakers seeking to become bilingual in Spanish with Spanish-only speakers seeking to become bilingual in Eng- lish. These programs exemplify the strengths of what that language diversity offers. In fact, dual language/language immersion schools establish their overall student population as well as their educational program based on an effort to maximize the richness that occurs when there are mixed language groups. Alianza Elementary School in the Pajaro Valley was one of our case study schools. It is a dual language and literacy program in Spanish and English. The central tenet of the school has been a commitment to bilingualism and cross cultural interaction and understanding. Established to encourage integration of Whites from the nearby Aptos coastal community and Latinos from the largely farmworking Watsonville community, both groups of children are grouped into classrooms to help them develop and maintain both oral and written fluency in English aid in Spanish throughout their elementary grades. The bicultural and biliterate focus of the school is heavily supported by both communities. Students are not only grouped together, but the curriculum is designed to acknowledge and incorporate Latino culture as co-equal with White culture. The language policy of the school is that one day Spanish is the official language 165 In Search of New and Flexible Student GroupingsKey to Student Learning 165 of the school (all adults use it in the interactions of the school), and the next day English is the official language. Cooperative learning is emphasized to encourage parity and integration among students. Here, the grouping has been purposely across cultures and communities, in a program designed to reap the richness of that diversity. It is not only the dual language and immersion schools in our study that were focused upon issues of language relations and integration. Sev- eral of the schools entered into restructuring with a prior strong program of bilingual education. Their bilingual education models embraced a commitment both to full access to the curriculum for LEP students, and to integration of LEP students with native English speaking peers. Students were grouped for part of the day for their home language instruction, and part of the day in mixed language groups for other activities and lessons. However, some of these schools served multiple language groups. Their old bilingual classroom approach meant students were in classes with only one other language/ethnic group. For example, Spanish speaking LEP students and English fluent students mixed in one classroom, while Cambodian students mixed with English fluent students in another. Faculty became concerned about how to promote fuller integration across multiple language groups, while still maintaining the access to curriculum that primary language instruction provided. Two of the four- teen case study elementary schools were in the thick of working out new structures of student grouping which address this dilemma. One of these is Melrose Elementary School in Oakland. The staff has developed and instituted the "SWAP" program, placing students in classrooms for primary language instruction in language arts, social studies and math in the morning, then moving them in the afternoon to a core program with students of mixed language groups for science, music and P.E. One teacher describes this program: "The SWAP system was created so kids can receive language instruction in their strongest language, but also interact and integrate with non-LEP students in the afternoon. They have two major groups they are part of now. SWAP classes are thematic in nature, across all classes and grade levels because the school does not want to isolate kids from each other, in any way. It's multiage, it's multi-language."Suzanne McCombs These schools are pushing the frontiers of bilingual education. They offer a wonderful example of how restructuring is an opportunity to build upon the research of bilingual education to design particular applications to new local demographic conditions. Also, these examples demonstrate how new possibilities in student grouping make it possible to promote integration and access to concent in students' primary languages.

Middle Schools In the 1987 State Department of Education publication Caught in the Middle, then State Superintendent of Instruction Bill Honig wrote of the special needs of young adolescents:

166

166 The Unfinished Journey "Perhaps the most critical aspect of these transitional years for students is the change from one to many teachers. The faculty and the schedule must be organized so that small groups of teachers have the same students and are enabled to work together collegially. The investment in collegial faculty relationships is the hallmark of the most successful middle schools. This kind of rapport leads to shared planning and creative improvements in curriculum and instruction. It is also the basis for providing sound advice to students." The document goes on to argue: "Large schools need to be divided into smaller, more easily managed units. Whether called "houses", "schools within a school", or by some other term, the primary purpose is to allow a sense of closeness to develop between students and staff which enhances the development of intellectual growth, academic achievement and emotional and social maturity." In testimony to the power of this reform document and the dissemination strategy that accompanied its release, all of the middle schools involved in our case study research said Caught in the Middle had strongly shaped their move to new student groupings. All had divided students and faculty into families, houses or teamssmall units within the school. And, in fact, all spoke with enthusiasm about these changes: "Restructuring has made an enormous difference in meeting student needs. The whole school is so much more student centered and less kids slip through the cracks. Teachers know their kids in a way we couldn't in the old way of grouping kids. We can be their first counselorsit really works. There is a team of us who really know each kid, share perspectives on our kids, can problem solve about each kid. It's great!"Linda Dallin, teacher, Horace Mann Middle School

"What we're talking about is the implementation of small human development cadres which focus on the whole child and developing all aspects of a child's social, political and academic education. Our teacher teams can do that, because they share the same 1 kids."Charles Baldwin, principal, Olive Vista Middle School

"It was the decision of our family to sub-divide even morefrom 150 students to two groups of only 75 students. It's so we can know them even better. There are fewer adults involved, but we know them better. The kid messes up with one, he's in trouble with all of us... The relationships are narrower, but deeper. Stress is reduced for both kids and adults."Animal, teacher, O'Farrell Middle School Some teachers stressed the benefits of teaming with other teachers, breaking the traditional isolation and inspiring their lesson planning. Others emphasize how student needs can be more readily identified and addressed, and the stronger safety net built into the "family" or "house" 167 In Search of New andFlexible Student GroupingsKey to Student Learning 167 structure. Still others focus on the great sense of community and ability to promote human relations among students, and between students and faculty.

At the Middle School Level:

Families or Houses: Heterogeneous smaller groupings of (by ability) students and teachers grouping

While family or house structures are widespread, the way students are assigned to these varies. Most schools were committed to the concept of gi heterogeneous grouping, mixing students of different abilities. Roughly half of the schools were either practicing heterogeneous grouping, plan- Believing in ning on switching to it, or engaged in serious conflict about how to employ a fully heterogeneous program. heterogeneous What people mean by "heterogeneous", and what strategies they employ to maximize teaching and learning within those groupings, is a grouping is one thing. subject of great debate within many schools. Teachers who have taught for years to same-ability groupings worry about how they can accommo- Getting an entire school date a wide range of skill levels among their students. Teachers who, through seniority usually, have won themselves the prized positions staff to define teaching gifted or advanced classes are reluctant to give up working with these students every day. And, at some schools there is controversy on and implement it is the exclusion (or inclusion) of certain groups of students from the "heterogeneous" definitionGATE students, newcomer immigrant students, quite another. special education students, "at-risk", or others. Believing in heterogeneous grouping is one thing. Getting an entire school staff to define and implement it is quite another. And even then, new professional development forachers, and new supports for students are necessary. "Detracking is now on our agenda. Some teachers are very excited by it. Those in the regular classes feel the advanced classes have been a brain drain, and they look forward to detracking. But there is also some real resistance to it. So this year, we decided staff development would focus on supports to student achievement. It didn't seem like we couid just detrack without having in place the kind of supports that would ensure all kids could keep up." -Kimiko Fukuda, Principal, Wilson Middle School The Accelerated Schools Project is one of the major national reform efforts focusing upon heterogeneous groupings, and has led the way in establishing whole schools dedicated to this approach. Most of the Pro- ject's schools are at the elementary level, targeting the prevention of 168 168 The Unfinished Journey achievement gaps between groups because of differential educational experiences at school. But the dilemma for middle (and high) schools attempting heterogeneous groupings is that students arrive at their doors from schools which have been tracked, carrying with them their history of unequal schooling experiences. One of the middle schools in our study was an Accelerated Schools Project site. A few years into the project, the faculty were somewhat divided and unsure about whether heterogeneous groupings were working. The whole staff had subscribed to a notion of a common core curriculum for all students in heterogeneous groupings. All students, they had agreed, would be exposed to Algebra. But two years after implementing the program, the school returned to tracking their math classes. One teacher spoke of her frustration: "The Accelerated idea was supposed to help more students, more equally. I saw so many Black and Hispanic kids floundering in those heterogeneous math classes, though. We were hoping that the positive message that 'you can all do it' would be enough. We were hoping that they could make real gains with accelerated materials. But they had all that history and all those gaps already there when they got to us. I feel like we ended up putting them into a class where they couldn't handle the material. That's pretty negative in itself. Then we decided to offer what we call zero period before-school tutoring for all kids needing extra help. The zero period was filled with Black and Hispanic kids. And they started calling themselves the zeros. So after a lot of discussion, we went back to ability grouping our math classes. We don't know if this is the answer or what we'll try from here." There are no easy answers. Schools which attempt to group students heterogeneously by ability are engaged in an ongoing assessment process. They constantly ask themselves: What seems to be working? What isn't working? It is the liveliness of this dialogue that illustrates restructuring schools. It is a willingness to try things, to reassess and try something else. It is a search for answers. Another middle school is firmly committed to the practice that all students belong in the heterogeneous classes, receiving the same advanced curriculum. This means students spend as little time as possible in separate classes to meet their specific needs (e.g. special education and English as a Second Language classes), because this would pull them out of their regular mixed classes. Yet the teachers continue to struggle with what this means as they examine the challenges facing their immigrant, limited English speaking and other students. At a Community Council meeting, the discussion revealed the tension and dilemmas this caring and motivated staff was dealing with. The ESL teacher began:

"Right now I see about ninety kids who really need more help. I have at least three students from one family who say they don't understand a word the teachers are saying. This issue is particularly a problem for the Lao students, but it seems to be a problem for a lot of our ESL students." 169 In Search of New and Flexible Student GroupingsKey to Student Learning 169 A second teacher continued: "I'm questioning whether one hour a day of ESL is enough for our kids. I think we might consider changing to a different structure that gives them more ESL." Another responded: "The common belief system here is a single academic program for I all kids. If they're trying to add more ESL, they're going to erode what we've built. The LEP kids already are not getting their electives. We don't want to create an ESL family. We want heterogeneous groups. I believe in total immersion, and those kids ought to be getting their electives along with everyone else. It's a real problem to me that they're missing their electives and that we're putting them in any kind of separate group just for themselves." Another teacher emphatically added: "My concern is that we'd be backsliding. Maybe this just means that we have to share more strategies for individualizing instruction. All of us should learn how to meet the needs of all kids in the mixed groups. We shouldn't have to separate out the ESL kids. This is not a bilingual program. That's not what we're about." The fifth teacher was adamant: "Let's not think that by isolating these children that we will be meeting their needs!" For the staff at this school, any targeted program for a specific group of students could potentially crack the total heterogeneous program they had fought to develop. Any form of separation was resisted. The Princi- pal explains: "We will not participate in the segregation of anybody. Our teachers hate Chapter I because it tests our belief system. For support we do have ESL and special education courses during discovery time, a decision made only after long heated debate. In most schools kids in special education or ESL tend to stay there all their educational careers. Our school says, 'No, that is immoral." Other schools respond to students' language needs differently, emphasizing access to content for their LEP students. At Horace Mann Middle School, one family at each grade level includes a group of Span- ish speaking LEP students, while another family has a grouping of Chi- nese LEP students. The students are grouped with others of similar Eng- lish language fluency for content area courses, to facilitate their primary language support. They also spend some parts of the day with other groups within their larger families, benefiting from integration with Eng- lish speakers. There is a Spanish bilingual teacher for every core subject, but not a Chinese one because the enrollment numbers don't always lead to the hiring of a Chinese bilingual teacher.

170 170 The Unfinished Journey "Restructuring has confused and made more difficult meeting the needs of our LEP students. With the old way we could just have separate bilingual classrooms. Now in our family, we have nine Chinese LEP low level ESL students. It's hard to address their needs this way. We tried a newcomer mixed language and mixed grade strand to bring them up to English literacy and English levels where they could be mainstreamed. But we didn't like that either. We're still experimentingtrying to find our way." Sandy Ca lvo, teacher, Horace Mann Middle School Yet the school remains committed to both access to content for their LEP students through primary language instruction and integrated, heterogeneous groupings in families. Mac Dowell Sixth Grade School in San Diego has chosen to create a whole Spanish bilingual "house". The three bilingual core teachers are very enthusiastic about working in this dynamic that allows them to focus on creating an interdisciplinary bilingual program, and where they have the flexibility to assemble students in groups of similar English ability for some tasks, and similar academic levels for others. The school addresses the need for integration with English speakers through an active program of cross-house activities.

High Schools The high schools in this study were involved in a variety of grouping approachesbut none dominated the field as is the case in elementary and middle schools. Fifty percent of high schools were focusing on heterogeneous groupings at least within one department if not school-wide. Reaching consensus about the appropriateness of mixing varying ability students together at the high school level is apparently even more difficult than in middle schools. Students and parents, concerned about preparation for college and meeting Advanced Placement requirements, exert pressure to maintain a top tier. By high school, the achievement and skills gaps are at their widest between students. For example, immigrant students arriving in the adolescent years range from having little or no prior formal schooling to very strong academic backgrounds, though not necessarily in the subjects required for graduation from a California high school. Oceana High School, built upon the Coalition for Essential Schools model, is deeply committed to heterogeneous groupings. Yet they too are torn about its implementation:

171 In Search of New and Flexible Student GroupingsKey to Student Learning 171 "Heterogeneous grouping is a hot issue for us now The school is reinstating an advanced placement program on a pilot basis. We're not sure if it's the right decision, and it came primarily from teachers who felt that many of our smart and motivated students weren't being sufficiently challenged, and a lot of the low skilled kids were having a hard time. It was a hard realiza- tion. It's really our own shortcomings, but the response is to go back to separation because we don't know what else to do. "One of the principles of Coalition for Essential Schools is that classes should be heterogeneously grouped, but it hasn't worked well for us. We have reading abilities from the fifth grade to a senior in college. How does one teacher meet the needs of a wide range like that?"Steve North, teacher

At the High School Level:

Heterogeneous grouping Pilot or magnet programs

Planning or implementing Block scheduling career pathways

To maintain heterogeneous groupings, while meeting the needs of students concerned about college entrance, schools are trying a variety of mechanisms. Some grant extra advanced placement credit to students in the heterogeneous classes for doing supplementary work outside of class. Others create AP classes with open enrollment to any student who agrees to do the level of work needed. Much of the deviation from traditional grouping structures at the high school level is in the form of magnet programs or innovative pilot programs within schools. Florin High School in Sacramento is piloting a small Business Education and Technology house for 'at-risk' students. Franklin High School in Los Angeles is piloting a Humanitas core program where a small group of students and teachers work together through most of the school day. The school also has a magnet program

172 172 The Unfinished Journey called the College Incentive Magnet. Overfelt High School in San Jose offers a technology magnet program. All of the schools are proud of these programs. But we also discovered that faculty and students in the specialty programs experience some type-casting, jealousy and social separation from the rest of the school. Often, the enrollment in special programs is ethnically, culturally and linguistically different from the student body at large. One teacher describes: "Our magnet has 225 students, in a high school of almost 2,000. It has a real feeling of togetherness and warmth. A 'house' feeling. We hope to move the whole school eventually towards houses, but aren't sure how to do it. Most of the leadership kids in the school are in the magnet program. It has its own faculty, too, and they are mostly the innovative teachers. We don't take ESL students, though, because the teachers aren't trained to work with them. Our magnet is 50% Asian. The rest of the school is 80% Latino." A teacher at another school bitterly described a similar situation: "Magnet kids are bussed in from other neighborhoods. They get the best classes, the best equipment, the scholarships, the best teachers because they are GATE and AP. They take the cream out of the school and walk out. The community gets nothing. They are almost all. Filipino and Asian. It's a point that isn't lost on all our Latino kids. They see who gets the honors, who gets the goodies. It's an awful situation for a school in the heart of a Lati- no neighborhood." And, at a third school, a student spoke out: "They must have a racial quota for the magnet and honors program. They won't take Latinos, that's a problem here. The counselors discourage us all the time. If your face is brown, no honors, no college prep. They say, 'I don't think you can make it in that program, you don't have the grades.' They mean, we don't have the brains. Aren't they supposed to be helping us? You learn that you have to be tough and just keep pushing and pushing and not take 'no' and then maybe you can get in a college prep class. Some teachers are great, a lot are horrible. But you can't just askyou have to demand they take you seriously." Thus, the ethnic and language dynamics around small special pilot or magnet programs sometimes become a powerfully divisive force. Those comprehensive high schools with school-wide (as compared to departmental or special program) plans for new student groupings were mostly focused upon the vision of Second to None, or the `Two-Two' model of career pathways. The America Work Force 2000 report was cited as often as other school reform documents by restructuring high schools. All of these models group students by career interests in their last two years of high school, with opportunity for some form of work experience structured into the student's program. Half of the case study schools were in the process of developing career pathways programs. None had developed them to the point of full implementation, and it is

173 In Search of New and Flexible Student GroupingsKey to Student Learning 173 gg too soon in the process to understand the dilemmas and challenges that will be faced. For too long, tracking Another major reform in student grouping at the high school level is the move to block scheduling. Six of the high schools we studied made and gatekeeping this a cornerpiece of their restructuring effort. Most were in various stages of reconsidering the traditional schedule of six or seven daily fifty mechanisms have minute periods. Block scheduling combines the traditional periods of the high school day into longer blocks to allow more in-depth instruction frozen disproportionate and/or interdisciplinary teaching. Instead of a student having a fourth period history class and a fifth period literature class, s/he has a com- numbers of students bined fourth/fifth period class that interweaves the study of history and literature of a time period. The course is team taught by English and of color, poor students social studies teachers. In other schools, block scheduling is used to take year long classes and condense them into half year classes. Thus a stu- and immigrants out of dent might take two periods of U.S. history the first semester but not any science, while the second semester the situation would be reversed. This higher order thinking is done to allow for more intensive immersion in a subject, and also to cut down on the number of courses both students and teachers are grap- classes, and prerequisite pling with at one time. In either case, block scheduling is dependent upon and necessary for courses to higher teaching approaches that are interactive and student centered. Two hours of lecture can be deadly; fifty minutes is far too short for group projects, education. simulations and library research.

FP Considerations for Student Grouping Reforms There is no question that rethinking traditional approaches to student grouping is important from the perspective of concern about access, equity and diversity. For too long, tracking and gatekeeping mechanisms have frozen disproportionate numbers of students of color, poor students and immigrants out of higher order thinking classes, and prerequisite courses to higher education. However, it is evident that the field is still grappling to achieve student groupings that are equitable and integrated, while still meeting the essential needs of particular sub-groups of students. Most of the schools we studied were actively engaged in rethinking their student grouping practices. This is welcome news. However, our research found that while schools should be applauded for moving away from past harmful practices of tracking students by ability, in its place there must be informed and flexible new approaches to grouping students that will best enhance their educa- t- tional and social success. Insistence on heterogeneous groupings of all students in the name of desegregation and detracking is clearly causing confusion and inappropriate placements. In the case of LEP students being placed only in the regular program where teachers lack adequate training and strategies to assure their full participation, "heterogeneous groupings" are much like the old "sink or swim"

174 174 The Unfinished Journey approach for ESL students. Our chapter on language issues and programs (Chapter 10) takes a closer look at these complex issues and choices for schools. We are similarly concerned about new student groupings that simply throw students together because they cannot be accommodated anywhere in the "regular" reformed structures. For example, one high school divided into houses but couldn't accommodate lower level ESL students within that structure, leaving newcomer students "homeless" (in the words of one student) until they developed sufficient levels of English fluency to join a permanent house. Those schools we identified developing new educational groupings appropriate for diverse students that will fully serve their educational needs were experimenting with a variety of approaches that center on several key principles:

Every student has multiple dimensions that need to be honored and addressed. At times a student may be grouped "homogeneously" by English language fluency for purposes of English language development, but in a group that is heterogeneous by grade level and language. At times a student may be grouped homogeneously by interest in a particular project, while the same group may be called heterogeneous by skill level. At times students may be grouped homogeneously by prior exposure to math, though heterogeneously by age and national background. At times groups may be wholly randomly arranged; at times students may be brought together to meet with others from their own neighborhood or cultural background. A basic principle of school programs that honor and nurture diversity is that students are allowed these multiple dimensions. They experience both same-type groupings and cross-type groupingsbut most importantly, throughout their experiences in school these groupings are flexible and must change to address student needs. There is no polarity created by separating students for targeted instruction sometimes, when they are brought together for integrated learning experiences in heterogeneous groupings at other times. There is a time and place for both types of groupings in learningboth are necessary. The litmus test that must be applied when students are grouped separately is whether they are being given access to the same high quality curriculum as other students, and whether the separate grouping offers advantages and support that cannot be equally well provided in a mixed setting. The litmus test that must be applied in heterogeneous groupings is whether students are being provided the supports they need for full participation. 1 In all cases, with all groups of students, high expectations for all students are essential.

To fully implement new forms of student groupings based on these principles requires a great deal of professional development, coaching and time for teacher planning. Many educators in our study told us that they felt very unprepared for experimenting with new grouping practices, 175 In Search of Neu, and Flexible Student GroupingsKey to Student Learning BEST COPY AVAILABLE 175 unequipped with the professional knowledge and support to work with mixed-ability groups, and unaware that same-ability groups may be appropriate in some cases. As one elementary teacher told us: "There's probably an art to doing it right, but the planning time and stability needed to follow through and make it work are just I not there." It is evident that the restructuring movement has taken to heart the need to achieve student groupings that are equitable and that maximize educational involvement. Whether trying to implement heterogeneous classrooms, multi-grade groupings, or career clusters, schools spoke elo- quently of the critical importance of professional development, and access to the research on grouping. As the configuration of students in a classroom changes and becomes diverse in new ways, teachers must have the support to create teaching strategies and learning environments that not only accommodate, but build upon the riches diversity can offer.

176 176 The Unfinished journey CHAPTER 9.

MULTICULTURAL CURRICULUM

At Horace Mann Middle School in San Francisco, the second-floor walls are dedicated to beautiful student-made posters, with important messages: "Respect One Another", "Racism is a Sin", "No Insulten No Pelear" (No insult- ing, no fighting) "Be Good to Our Earth and Proud of Our World", "Que Haya Paz en el Mundo" (Let There be Peace in the World), "Break the Ice, Not the Heart". Every year posters are made by students in the opening thematic unit on prejudice and community. Flags of different nations hang from the ceiling of the first floor hallway. Bright photos of the student "Conflict Managers" adorn the bulletin board so the entire student body will learn to recognize their faces. A caption explains that "The conflict manager project recognizes that conflict is a natural process and seeks to find peaceful solutions to problems. It also recognizes that students can solve their own problems and that students are responsible people. If you have a conflict you want to solve, speak to a conflict manager" Two large Chinese scrolls hang outside the front office. The Chinese characters on one read: "Respecting Teachers and Fellow Students nurtures a noble spirit", and on the other: "Diligent Studies and Assiduous Practices Create a Fresh Atmosphere" The signs on the walls of the library are multilingual in Chinese, Spanish and English. These visuals make manifest the school- wide commitment to affirming the diversity of the school cc mm unity. The heart of the school's restructuring vision is its multicultural corriculum. Class- room and schoolwide units developed by teachers educate students about the value of their own contributions to society, diverse human experiences and the struggle for equality

178 177 The Unfinished Journey CC ulticultural Curriculum" is a term -hat has taken on a life of it own in the world of educationor you might say "lives." For many, the term and concept are old hat "Doesn't everyone do multicultural curriculum now?" For others, the term can quickly "push buttons." One teacher pulled us aside in a school and whispered: "Don't use the M word here. You can say 'diversity', but don't say 'multicultural'. It makes everyone defensive." Multicultural curriculum means so many things to so many people, it has clearly become a difficult and complex subject to sort out in schools, including those restructuring. Unfortunately, many schools have resorted to silence rather than sustain the needed dialogue on multicultural education. This is partly due, we believe, to battle fatigue following the divisive debates that marked textbook adoptions in 1990-91, and the accompanying attacks from the national front which claimed that too much focus on our individual differences was tearing the nation apart. The most prevalent attitudes towards multicultural education in the schools we observed may be characterized as follows. The state frameworks are considered to have taken care of the need for any further multicultural curriculum development. Multicultural issues are understood narrowly and/or trivialized, i.e., many people said, "Multicultural curriculum? We do Martin Luther King Day." Focus on the experiences of specific racial, cultural and linguistic groups, beyond holidays, traditional costumes or native foods, is perceived as potentially divisive or segregating. Multiculturalism is believed to be fully addressed by sheer virtue of the students' own multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-lingual natures. Multicultural curriculum is avoided in discussions about school change because of discomfort or anxiety about race, culture and language issues, and also sometimes because of political dissension. But we can not close the book on this curricular field that brings students of color to the center of the program to flourish rather than flounder in the background where we have placed them for so long. And we cannot turn from a vision and challenge of offering all students the broadest possible understanding of human experience. Multicultural curriculum is central to this task, and it is, in our definition, basic and essential curriculum for all students; anti- racist and anti-discriminatory; inclusive of multiple perspectives; a process of critical inquiry and criticalthinking about power relations; and educationthat A 178 Multicultural Curriculum 179 nrci enpv61/111111R1 F seeks to prepare all students for full participation in creating a just diverse society. In 1990, California Tomorrow publisheda report, Embracing Diver- sity, on the strategies of 33 excellent teachers meeting the challenges of diverse classrooms. The content they taught, and the teaching and learning approaches they created in their classrooms were fundamentally multicultural education. Following are the core concepts they shared, and the characteristics of their multicultural curriculum: Teaches to and from the experiences of the students and brings student lives and knowledge into the center of the curriculum Sets a climate of high expectations for all children Validates and builds the child's self esteem, and a sense of their own culture and national background, and at the same time, broadens their perspective to incorporate new worlds and perspectives Provides a strong academic context as a basis for exploring and understanding issues students face in their own lives Emphasizes the development of language and communication (both the child's home language and English) which includes a rigorous integration of oral language and writing, skills of articulation, and listening Develops complex critical thinking and critical inquiry Validates the child's experience and culture, including the use of the language, dialect, literature, music and fine arts of the child's culture Uses curriculum to explore cultural and national differences, and also emphasizes similarities and universals in human experience Presents global and international education, and cross cultural and multiple perspectives Creates a student centered classroom in which students learn from each other, with group work and interactive techniques Chooses materials and designs curriculum specifically to provide all students with exposure to the rich contributions of many cultures and peoples Uses supplementary curriculum materials and teacher and student created curriculum materials to offer a broad array of information, voices and perspectives Uses visuals and emphasizes concept development to ensure all students fuller access to the curriculum Utilizes the classroom as an environment to explore issues of personal prejudice, with classroom discussion about tolerance, oppression and bigotry Establishes a human relations climate which deliberately and clearly sets norms of acceptable behavior with regards to mutual respect, emotional safety and diversity appreciation

179 180 The Unfinished Journey Ensures the broad range of human diversity is evident on the walls of the classroom and in curriculum materials Builds respect, safety, trust, prosocial behaviors and a sense of community responsibility Some of these characteristics are present in many restructuring schoolscoop- erative learning, student directed learning, interdisciplinary and integrated thematic units. One of the hallmarks of curriculum restructuring in the schools in this research, was a move towards more student cen- teredness in the curriculum, and a concern with making curriculum more relevant to students' lives. More schools are giving students choices in defining and selecting curriculum themes and research projects. Student writing and publishing is widely stressed. Almost one fifth of the schools we studied were using approaches like Foxfire, the California Writing Project, oral history projects, and others in which students research and write about their lives and their communities. Thus, the current reform focus on curriculum and instruction is to create more avenues for students to learn from their own and each other's experiences. In a diverse community, these approaches do build in an aspect of multiculturalism. Where there is great interaction between students and teachers, where there is student directed learning, where there is collaboration among students, the richly diverse experiences of students are integrated to a considerable degree into the classroom. In fact, when teachers were interviewed about their curriculum, the following answers were typical: "We live egalitarianism. Given that we are a multicultural community, given that we emphasize everyone's worth, that is multicultural education. It's built in."

I "Small group interactions are integral to our teaching and learning, so our kids get multiculturalism that way". However, student-centered pedagogy is just one aspect of a full multicultural curriculum. Relatively few of the schools in this study had developed a comprehensive vision and program of multiculturalism. Few schools engaged in questioning and revisioning the content of what they were teaching, or developing the kind of comprehensive multicultural curriculum required to prepare students for a diverse society. Political shifts combined with budget cuts find few districts with multicultural curriculum coordinators any longer and few citing multicultural curriculum as a reform area. Only two out of 41 schools in our telephone interviews, and 7 out of 32 case study schools viewed multicultural curriculum as a key facet of their restructuring. In two schools, ethnic studies courses which had been established to provide a depth of study not sufficiently included in the regular school curriculum, were cut to make way for a "stronger core

Multicultural Curriculum 1 181 program': However, there was no concurrent discussion about changes Multicultural that might be necessary to include these perspectives and material in the remaining "core" curriculum. In another school ethnic studies units were curriculum is not a cut to make way for a reading program, but there was no accompanying discussion of the content of the books that students might use in the feature of the reading program. While almost half of the schools had instituted conflict resolution or mediation programs, only six had human relations and school restructuring intergroup relations curriculum to help students build an awareness of prejudice, diverse experiences, or a sense of community across groups. movement. And yet, While people were generally articulate, excited and open in discussing other curriculum issues and teaching approaches, tension sometimes the research on came to the surface when multicultural curriculum was raised. No school said that their curriculum was not multicultural. Arid, in effective instruction every school there was at least one teacher pursuing an active multicultural curriculum in his or her own teaching. To a large extent, schools for cultural and ethnic are relying on the California state social studies framework and a system of holiday celebrations to fulfill their responsibilities of curriculum for a minority students diverse society. There is basically an assumption that the frameworks "took care of" multicultural content, and so little reform or restructuring again and again has attention needs to be given to curricular content in this area. This appears at times to be a default position, and in close to half of the identified it as key schools, those faculty who would like to create a more inclusive curriculum reported feeling marginalized and unable to raise the subject. (please for diverse students see chapter 2, Dialogue). Based on our look at schools, multicultural curriculum is not a fea- having access to the ture of the school restructuring movement, despite the presence of an increasingly diverse student population. And yet, the research on effec- school program. tive instruction for cultural and ethnic minority students again and again has identified multicultural curriculum and culturally supportive pedagogy as key to their access to the school program. This research has shown that multicultural education promotes an understanding of the complexity of the human experience and the ways that the various groups have interacted and influenced each other. It is a critical strategy to combat internalization of negative stereotypes by students of color, and to help all students understand their own experiences in a wider context. And, the research has documented the important impacts upon students when they see others like themselves in the formal curriculum and materials of the school.

The Cutting Edge: Schools Restructuring to Become Multicultural Schools The schools we found that did claim multicultural curriculum as central in their restructuring vision viewed it is as part and parcel to building a multicultural community. Profiles of two schools featured in this chapter, as well as our closing "first person" interview with a teacher who has been a core member of her school's restructuring team, demonstrate similarities and differences in the ways schools weave together their multicultural visions with a set of strategies for school reform. One emphasizes getting students back into their communities to do service. Another emphasizes bringing parents onto campus to be involved in governance of the school. Several schools made efforts to address not only culture but language in their definition of a multicultural schoolfocus-

182 4 The Unfinished Journey ing upon the need to respect and incorporate children's home languages (dialects of English as well as languages other than English), the need for a strong English language program and primary language development for LEP students, and the creation of a program that affirmatively addresses the power relationships between language groups. One school works on explicit anti-racism and awareness activities. Another puts a major emphasis on building a multicultural core literature collection. For one, the focus arose through a mandated Consent Decree in their district. In another it was simply the passion and interest of a key faculty person that ignited the enthusiasm of the rest of the community. California Tomorrow has identified 3 major lessons to be drawn for whole school restructuring from these three and the other schools which were involved in an explicit focus on multicultural curriculum.

1. Schoolwide Multicultural Curriculum Demands Curriculum Development Those schools with an emphasis on multicultural curriculum articulated strongly that there is a mismatch between the content of available textbooks and the curricular needs of their students. They also shared a pedagogical philosophy that steered them away from reliance on textbooks. Student generated materials, multicultural literature, inquiry and multiple-perspective research approaches were far more common. Teach- ers and librarians spend huge time "scrounging", seeking out the kind of materials which might round out the curriculum to be more inclusive, more representative of the students they teach. Supplementary materials are essential to bring in the cultural and national histories of the students, and to assure multiple perspectives and a critical thinking emphasis. In these schools more than others, teachers became curriculum developers. Teaching an inclusive curriculum entails a search for new materials and approaches. Where formal texts don't exist, teachers must find other means to incorporate the viewpoints and materials necessary; where courses and workshops aren't available to help them chart a new course, teachers navigate on their own. Beyond the technical assistance associated with implementing the new state curriculum frameworks, there is little in the school system to support the development of innovative multicultural curriculum. Relatively scarce funds are being allocated from private foundations for this area of school reform. So generally, schools are out on their own. They seek resources from museums, libraries, ethnic bookstores, and a few non-profit curriculum projects such as Project SEED, The National Women's History Project, the Facing History and Ourselves Project, the Global Education Net- work, TRIBES and A World of Difference. (see Resource List in Appen- dix). To the extent teachers engage in these projects and professional development efforts together, and implement this curriculum in tandem with each other, they are better able to infuse the approaches and materials into the whole school program. Where they exist, resource teachers, resource centers and public librarians with expertise in ethnic and global literature are much called upon and highly regarded. But there are too few of these resources and people with the appropriate expertise. In the years since Proposition 13 altered the taxation system in California, funding for public libraries has dropped 40%, with the greatest cuts in children's library services. Cali- fornia has dropped from sixth to 50th in the nation in the number of 182 Multicultural Curriculum 183 public school librarians. District resource personnel and multicultural coordinator positions have been vastly reduced and become almost non-exis- tent in the fiscal squeeze of recent years. The supports for multicultural curriculum are eroding.

2. Multicultural curriculum is concerned with the languages as well as the cultures of all students. For restructuring schools, a focus on respecting and nurturing development of the home languages of students, and on building programs which address second language acquisition is part and parcel to a foc,s on multicultural curriculum. We found a very close relationship, almost a one to one overlap, between those schools centrally focused on building a strong LEP program and those focused on multicultural curriculum. To be concerned about cultural and ethnic relations is also to be concerned about language relations. A child's language is inextricable from her culture. These schools recognize the role of mother tongue in transmitting and maintaining family values and culture. And, they know that honoring and developing the home language is of critical importance to retaining pride in one's heritage and ethnicity. In bilingual classes of the restructuring schools who made this connection, the curriculum is explicitly bicultural, incorporating materials and Author Carmen Lomas Garza themes which reflect the lives of the students. The multicultural curricu- helped students at Virginia lum for all students incorporates an emphasis on learning each other's Rocca Barton School in Salinas languages as well as their cultures. And the climate of the school empha- create Aztec accordion style sizes respect and honor for mother tongues as well as English. books about their families. For example, at Melrose Elementary School in Oakland, the bilingual program and the multicultural language arts program explicitly address respect for children's languages. In addition to insisting on a strong bilingual program for LEP students to provide access to the curriculum, teachers bring in literature, poetry and other materials written in the dialects and community languages of students. Spanish speaking materials from Mexico, materials written in East Oakland dialect of English, and Cambodian myths. The school works to help students understand that different dialects and languages exist, and may be used with different impact in different situations. They emphasize that it is up to students themselves to select which language or dialect feels most appropriate to express what they want to say and the impact they want to have

3. Multicultural curriculum involves a focus upon community building and anti-prejudice learning school-wide Schools must accept the challenge to help students develop the skills of relating to one another across cultures, languages, ethnicities and communities. Critical to healing our society is the creation of mechanisms that counter the inequalities, separation, ignorance. fear that attend many of our relationships. One mechanism is to offer students activities that allow them to explore, understand and learn to mediate

184 I3 The Unfinished Journey human relations within their classrooms, schools and communities. But rarely in our study did restructuring schools explicitly articulate this mission within their overall goals, or devote resources to programs or curriculum addressing intergroup relations. There are a few schools working to foster in their students the skills of community-building across their differences, and across chasms of unequal access and privilege. We have identified the following focus areas among them. Some schools work on just one of these areas, but the more effective are those that integrate as many as possible. 1. Developing personal awareness and communication skillsThis rests on an analysis that students are unable to communicate effectively cross-culturally, and that the solution is to help them know themselves more fully (with an emphasis on esteem building and finding one's own "voice") and to improve communication with their peers. Thus, for example, Wilson Middle School in San Diego has a self-esteem and human relations curriculum utilized in the morning advisory periods. 2. Creating strong, connected communitiesThis focuses on building a solid sense of community and caring relationships within the classroom or school, emphasizing group process skills. Projects like TRIBES, the Child Development Project and others specialize in these kinds of curriculum and classroom approaches. Artesia High School offers regular rock-climbing weekends where students' survival depends on their cooperation and taking care of each other. This program originally began in the early 1970s to encourage gang members from competing groups to open up to each other. 3. Resolving ConflictsOne-half of the elementary schools and one- quarter of the secondary schools in our study have some kind of conflict resolution program in place. It is often more rooted in an attempt to create safer, less violent schools than to explicitly address issues of cultural or racial/ethnic conflicts. Most programs focus on teaching students a series of steps to resolve conflicts non-violently. Schoolwide conflict resolution often involves training a group of students as conflict managers available at recess and breaktimes on the school yard or campus. 4. Unraveling Personal PrejudicesStudents bring to their interactions with others learned stereotypes and prejudices that perpetu- ate patterns of discrimination against those of different religious, cultural and ethnic groups. Curriculum efforts focus upon giving students opportunities to gain new information about others and to examine their own belief systems, attitudes and behaviors. A World of Difference and Green Circle are perhaps the most widespread in California, but there is a wonderful array of curriculums and activities available. 5. Recognizing Institutionalized OppressionWhatever individuals do to reduce their own prejudice or improve communication with others, there are still forces that separate us which are embedded in the institutions of our society. Students need a forum to explore these issues, and curriculum to help them analyze societal institu- 184 Multicultural Curriculum 185 rions and the power relations among them. There doesn't seem to be a packaged curriculum or program in this area; most often this area is taught by a creative social studies team, assigning student committees to analyze the institutional aspects of their school, community or other arenas to which they relate. 6. Gathering Strength and Perspective Through Others who Share Common ExperiencesAnother way to help students live in a diverse society is to provide an organized forum for members of a group to support one another and explore the meaning of their experiences as a "minority" or "majority" member. Here, students whose experiences are generally not validated or who do not find them safe to talk about in mixed groups, gain strength and perspective within the context of a caucus, club or discussion group. This encourages self-examination, self-determination and self-definition, and pursuit of knowledge about one's own culture and experience. But such programs were seldom present in restructuring schools: only four high schools had ethnic clubs; only two had ethnic studies classes. Some ESL and newcomer program teachers expressed the importance of their classes as havens for this kind of discussion for immigrant students, because they form a context in which limited English proficient and recently arrived immigrants are grouped separate from their English fluent and native U.S. born peers. 7. Gaining Knowledge about Human Relations in other Times, Places and CulturesThis final area entails a strong core of multicultural knowledge through a curriculum that examines historical, international and comparative examples of oppression and resistance to it. Studying history from the perspective of those whose voices have often been left out has the power to help students understand forces of oppression, resistance and social change, and to connect this knowledge to their own diverse lives. Global Stud- ies curriculum, comparative approaches to social studies or literature, Facing History and Ourselves or other thematic curriculum units dealing with these issues, are all ways that individual teachers work these issues into the curriculum. Thus, for example, at Alianza Elementary School in Watsonville, teacher Terry Marchese designed a sixth grade unit in which students visited the Anne Frank exhibit, and then explored how discrimination impacts upon their own and other's lives. Again, it is a rare school that approaches the aforementioned focus areas on a school-wide basis, with school-wide planning, or as part of a school-wide vision. Even rarer are district wide or regional efforts. Yet the literature on multicultural curriculum, on anti-racism and anti-prejudice efforts underscores the necessity of permeating the total school environment.

185 186 The Unfinished Journey Questions for Reflection Where is the vision and commitment to these concerns? What might it look like on a schoolwide or district level? How might we define the student outcomes needed by our society such as the ability to function respectfully, openly, wholeheartedly in a diverse society and to embrace the wonders of diverse human experience? If we honor those skills, if we render them core to what our society needs to emerge from this era of history intact and strong, it will mean far more focus in schools upon these issues, more deliberate policy mechanisms and programmatic supports for schools to draw upon, and a broader community dialogue about what those skills really are. We would recognize, then, that many of our immigrant students and our urban students are at a distinct advantage in having in their daily lives the riches of diversity and the opportunities to develop those skills. Our schools could look to them, learn from them, support them in their struggle to reject the prejudices which an adult world foists upon them, and assist them in their efforts to refuse to succumb to the forces of separation and inequity which greet them at every turn.

186 Multicultural Curriculum 187 Horace Mann Middle School

Horace Mann Academic Middle School, whose prejudice awareness student art projects are described at the beginning of this chapter, is a Consent Decree school located in the Mission District (predominantly Latino) of San Francisco. Its population is typical of an inner city school in the Bay Area: 38% are Spanish surnamed, 21% "other" white, 14% Chinese, 10% African American, 6% Filipino. Almost one-fifth of the school is "LEP", many more are language minority students, coming from homes where the primary language is not English. The school was closed in 1984 because of a lawsuit by the NAACP charging poor student performance, a segregated student body, violence and general apa- thy. It was reopened the following year with an almost entirely new staff of teachers and administrators who agreed to sign a set of Consent Decree tenets. This philosophy ties the school to studying student outcomes, and designing appropriate responses. The Consent Decree tenets to which every teacher in the school has subscribed state: All individuals should learn to live and work in a world that is characterized by interdependence and cultural diversity All individuals are entitled to be treated with respect and dignity All individuals want to learn and be recognized for their achievement All individuals can learn All individuals learn in many ways and at varying rates Each individual learns best in a particular way All individuals are both potential learners and potential teachers If individuals do not learn, then those assigned to be their teachers should accept responsibility for this failure and should take appropriate remedial action Learning has both cognitive and affective dimensions Parents want their children to attain their fullest potential as learners and to succeed academically. The faculty attracted to and selected for the new Horace Mann came with passion in their hearts. As Sandy Calvo, one of those teachers explains: "I came here to do something different. I had been concerned about racism a lot, and it's hard to deal with those issues in a whole school that isn't concerned. So it was exciting to come here to Horace Mann where the focus was on the kids who weren't achieving. It was a whole school dedicated to that. The Consent Decree mandate was the backdrop. It told us right outyou will set up a place that addresses the problems of children of color."

188 The Unfinished Journey Horace Mann is, thus, a school committed by explicit mission and by faculty agreement to issues of equity, integration and access. It is a hand picked faculty, and they have taken that mission seriously. In 1989, the school decided to restructure, the spirit of the Consent Decree and the directions they had taken seeming to have lead them beyond traditional structures. The school restructured into "families", initiated block scheduling, and began curriculum alignment. Importantly, they also began a process of dialogue about their vision. Restructuring meant, for Horace Mann, making a place for a greater range of stakeholders in the daily governance of the school. The Horace Mann Com- munity Council became the decision making body of the school. It is comprised of 6 parents, 6 students, 6 teachers (one from each family), an administrator, a classfied staff representative, a counselor, one elective teacher, a paraprofessional, a P.E. teacher and a special education teacher. They examined their student achievement data to help determine priority areas of focus in restructuring. Through this process they identified that their African American, Spanish surnamed and Southeast Asian students were scoring below the mean on the CTBS (California Test of Basic Skills) tests, and that students overall demonstrated minimal understanding of writing skills tested on CAP (California Assessment Program). Thus, a formal focus on curriculum and instruction was instituted. In a school retreat around this time, teachers, students, parents and community members gathered to define what a successful graduate of the school should know and be able to do. One of four major goals reads: "Students will develop- self-esteem and a respect for human rights and the diversity of cultures. They will learn to work individually and cooperatively. They will take responsibility for their own lives and actions and for the well being of both the local and global community." The heart of the school's multicultural curriculum has been the efforts of teachers to develop both classroom and schoolwide units and activities. The school year begins with a campus-wide Awareness Month, a way for the school community to focus on issues of prejudice, bigotry and discrimination. Group building takes place within the "families" and across "families". By the time the month ends in a big assembly, the halls of the school are already decorated with the charts, artwork, poetry and posters from classroom projects on the theme. The math classes have collected statistics and done graphing related to issues of diversity and equity. A science class has done research and gone on field trips studying how the eye perceives color and then talked about the biologi- "We are like a deck of cards cal and social significance of skin color. The school year starts, then, by different colors, but the same setting the tone for the entire year. worth." Student poster for school-wide awareness month. 188 School Profile: Horace Mann Middle School 189 Importantly, the emphasis on multiculturalism in curriculum and learning goes even beyond this kind of awareness activity. Student pro- ductions and student choice are important. Multiple perspectives in curriculum are stressed. The use of cooperative learning groups is a high priority. Creating an International School Museum, overnight science field tripsthe school is alive with curriculum innovation. The diversity of the school is highly prized by teachers, students and parents alike. One parent said: "What could possibly be more wonderful than for my son to be able to go to such an integrated and diverse school where kids are respected and honored, and are helped to be friends and part of a community?" Horace Mann has developed a city-wide reputation as a wonderful school. In fact, the scramble to get into Horace Mann through the district's Optional Enrollment Process has threatened to affect the diversity of the school. Parents more familiar with the secondary school options in the district and poised to use the optional enrollment system are tending to be more white and Asian. Deciding that diversity was central to its vision, the faculty and parents have now formed a working group to focus upon recruitment among Latino, African American and immigrant Asian families so they can retain and enrich the diversity they so prize.

190 189 The Unfinished Journey SCHOOL PROFILE

Oceana High School

Oceana High School, one of four high schools in the Jefferson Union High School District in San Mateo County, opened with a restructured program in September of 1991. The high school was scaled down due to a combination of demographic changes and fiscal cuts in the district. The decision to greatly downsize one site became an opportunity for the district to begin to implement a new restructured model and a "school of choice." All staff members of the newly constituted Oceana had to apply to be part of the new effort. The major features of the restructured program include: a philosophy based on the Coalition of Essential Schools; a four year humanities core integrating English, social studies and the fine arts; heterogeneous grouping with high school graduation and university preparation courses for all; a community service requirement for graduation; an advisory program for all students to meet in small groups on a regular basis and discuss personal, academic and social issues; and a "student commitment to be active participants in their education." This curriculum is fundamentally designed to be student involved and student centered. The biding philosophy is to help adolescents learn to use their minds well, and to build the skills of participation in a community. So for Oceana, curriculum and pedagogy are the heart of restructuring. According to a vision statement written early in their planning process: "Our goals are simple: Each student will be expected to master essential skills and areas of knowledge. While these skills and areas will, to varying degrees,'reflect the traditional academic disciplines, our program design will be shaped by the intellectual and imagina- tive powers and competencies that students need. Teaching and learning will be personalized. The student will be the worker, rather than the receiver of teacher delivered instructional services. The diploma will be awarded upon exhibition by the student of his or her grasp of the central skills and knowledge of the school program." An important piece of this combined pedagogy/curricular reform is the thematic-based humanities core. Nowhere does this precisely specify a "multicultural" vision. But its implementation is explicitly multicultural in the choice of themes and the selection of materials. Each grade has a theme for the year around which all lessons are centered. For example, one year the Freshman theme was "cultures and conflict," while other grades focused on racism, the Holocaust and women. The curriculum is based upon exploring ideas and themes, with material drawn from a wide variety of cultures and historical periods. To do this, interdisciplinary teams of teachers plan lessons and activities together. They pull together primary source material, historical fiction and literature and art. By focusing on themes, the opportunity to create multicultural studies is enhanced. Carla Menist, a teacher at Oceana explains: "It's the world we live in; we have to approach this positively, so multiculturalism is central to us." The curriculum and staff are commited

1 92 190 The Unfinished .lourney to thethe use of multicultural literature in the humanities program. Much of this arose through the efforts of one teacher who had contact with the Herald and Humanitas projects, and whose entire career of teaching had involved curriculum development in multicultural education. Her enthusiasm, contacts, ideas and resources became the heart of Oceana's multicultural curriculum. Teachers at Oceana aspire to emphasize a variety of instructional methods, all focused on active learning. They include: cooperative group activities, problem solving, independent student-centered research, team teach- /t7 ing, students teaching other students, large and small group experiences, performance based evaluation, and involving students in curriculum planning. The course work is supplemented by an "Interim Course". The length of both semesters is reduced to provide a few weeks between semesters for a comprehensive, project based study of a special topic chosen by students, sometimes including field trips. All of this shifts the role of the library. Where students are involved in thematic inquiry and interdisciplinary studies, where students are engaged in independent research and are expected to draw upon multiple perspectives, the library has to become a central resource center. Oceana's restructuring effort, therefore, had to include "This drawing represents my rethinking the library. While the school didn't have special funds to actu- ancestors. I come from an ally redesign the library, they did have an energetic librarian. island in the Pacific and music is greatly appreciated there. "We were hustlers, did Bingo with parents to raise funds to put The two weather scenes together a computer center and set it up as a research center. The represent my inner feelings kids love it. We have four computerized encyclopedias. It used to of grief and joy." be that being a librarian was a kind of safe, protected job out of James Montenegro the fray. But I'm going crazy and I'm involved here. We talk a lot Oceana High about what is going on in the classes, what kids are studying and what individual kids seem interested in, and what kinds of topics and research they are planning to do. I then puruse all the libraries in the area and check out who has what kinds of resources that might be useful to our kids. We have to use other people's expertise and resources and materials, we are just too small to have it all here at the school. But that's part of helping kids figure out how to access materials in the community." This weaving together of curriculum content, pedagogy and student role is necessary given the vision of what the school is attempting to do. Says Lois Jones, Principal of Oceana,

191 School Profile: Occana High School 193 "A student who can think will take an active role in their community, will vote, will care about others, be able to solve problems and see the connections between education and life. They will have a strong sense of self. That's what we want for our students, and we are clear and focused on that." For Oceana, a vision of multicultural curricular themes and materials is linked- also--to a vision of students in -their communities-anti -.in their world. All students must serve 100 hours in the community in order to graduate. The program was largely developed by students, which in the eyes of the coordinating teacher was the only way it could have suc- ceeded. The students contacted organizations to find out guidelines for volunteers, wrote a booklet for students on how to go about finding a community service position, and did all the typing, design and lay- out of the community service brochure. The notion from Oceana's viewpoint is not

< , L I% just to provide services to the community, - - ,-`; but to instill a new kind of awareness and , skill in their students: Drawing by Yukiyo Takaishi, "A lot of students opt to work in schools with younger kids. It's a Oceana High more familiar environment for them, and they like young kids. Some Adopt a Beach. After a beer party had trashed the beach two months ago, the students were really disgusted. It had become in some ways 'their' beach, and they had to clean up someone else's mess. They had a sense that the community belongs to them and a sense of outrage at destructiveness against the environment. They've gained a sense of the work it takes to take care of the planet. That's what we want. It's unlikely any of the students who do that community service assignment will ever litter on beaches again."Carla Menist, teacher It is about, in the words of one of the teachers: "....focusing on creating whole human beings who care and take responsibility for our world, and have the skills and knowledge to do so."

194 192 The Unfinished Journey Moyra Contreras

This "first person" is from an interview with Moyra Contreras, the staff development coordinator at Melrose Elementary School in Oakland. She began at Melrose as a third grade teacher in 1987. A mentor teacher, trainer of trainers, consultant to various projects, Moyra has been deeply involved in Melrose's restructuring. Melrose is committed to providing an atmosph-ye where all students take pride in their heritage and appreciate the cultures of others. This entails multiple strategies. They are continually refining core, extended and recreational literature lists for grades K-6 in both English and Spanish. To emphasize student writing and student production, the school established a Publishing Center with the technology for students to publish their own works. There is a lami- nator, computers, art supplies, etc., so students can write, edit, illustrate and bind their own books. It also includes a Professional Library, which includes books that parents may check out in English and Spanish about the writing process, whole language approach and school reform. Many other elements of their curriculum and school structure also embrace and build upon the students' diversity. Melrose wrote the following in its S8 1274 proposal:

"While appreciating the cultural/linguistic diversity, we also acknowledge the strain and discomfort this has caused in the community and the school. The challenge for our students, parents and staff has been in learning to live and work with people different from ourselves. We need to learn more about each other and better ways of communicating with and appreciating each other. We need to build alliances among staff members, parents, and the community through inclusion in the developing of school curriculum." In this interview, Moyra explains how the school has worked hard to be sensitive and responsive to the students, leading to improved student achievements and school success.

196 193 The Unfinished Journey A Key Planner's Perspective: Site Management And Multicultural Curriculum by Moyra Contreras

Origins of Restructuring at Melrose When ! Reached America

CC don't think it's possible to separate out our I wish I was tree. multicultural curriculum from the rest of the I came to America aspects of our school. I think it grew out of to start a new life. But my family was trapped the fact that we were dissatisfied with how the students in a place where you can't were performingthat as a school, we weren't doing a talk or play. very good job of teaching. They are lonety and sad. Six years ago ..,e had over one hundred students Itried to do something but Icouldn't. suspended. We had fights on the playground, a lot more racial slurs, students not really working together or even knowing that much about each other. The school and the community were in very rapid transition. Until about twelve years ago, this was a predominantly African American school. Now, in 1993, we have 25 percent African American students and 75 percent students that speak English as a second language, some of those being limited English proficient students, some fluent English proficient students. So there have been a lot of issues that we have had to deal with just related to those changes in the community. Also, when we started restructuring, 90 percent of our students were scoring below the 50th percentile on L the CTBS tests. We don't usually put much value on the CTBS test., because we don': feel that it measures what we're teaching. But in this case, the test scores seemed to mirror what we saw happening. For example, when I started at Melrose as a third grade From poetry book produced teacher, half of my students could not read. That was a strong indicator through the Publishing Center to me that there was something wrong. I took all of those students' cases by students in Chris Ashley's to the Student Study Team, and looking through their records it was class. clear that they had been in and out of bilingual programs. That means that one year they had had only English instruction, the next year Span- ish. By the time they were in third grade, they didn't know how to read in either language, and they were very confused. It was clear that we needed to develop a very strong transition policy and very strict guidelines as to when a student whose primary language is not English can go into an English-only classand that's what we did. The students really need to be prepared for that transition, and now we don't even begin to consider it until the fourth grade. So that is an example of the kind of very basic thing we had to deal with before we could even begin to talk about what kind of curriculum we were going to provide for the students. That first year I was at Melrose, there was a core of teachers that began a dialogLe about what we should do school-wide. Some of us were experimenting with whole language approaches and using literature based teaching, and we felt if it was successful that we should make t}: ,.se

First Person: Moyra Contreras 41 d approaches school wide for more consistency and success. That core group of teachers studied not only the issues of curriculum, but also We're trying to show looked at changes in management style. A couple of us were mentor teachers at the time, and we were able to go to Southern California and the students that what look at a school that had a management team structure that we were very impressed with, and also teams of teachers working together. We took they bring with them aspects of what they were doing that we thought could be beneficial. The first thing we dealt with was the safety issue. We wanted to is invaluable, that develop a safe place for the students. We wanted to get them to school. We wanted to make sure that they had good attendance, so we devel- they're not coming oped a school-wide discipline policy. We gave incentives for excellent attendance. We gave awards to both students and teachers for atten- empty-handed; they dance, which helped to make that a school wide priority. We also instituted a daily PE program where we bought equipment for the students to have a lot to teach us use during recess. This way they could not only be active during recess, but they could be involved in things other than getting into arguments and they have a lot to with each other. Those elements were very successful in changing the school culture and environment. teach each other. In the first years of our restructuring, we dealt a great deal with the curriculum and made some very basic decisions. We decided that we IF were going to use literature to teach reading and writing, that we were going to read to all of our students daily, from kindergarten to sixth grade, and that we would have our children write daily. We were going to have a daily PE program to get our kids physically fit as well as mentally fit, and the teachers would go out for PE for 20 minutes a day every day, so that we would model that exercise was important. That set the framework for moving from a traditional way of admin- istering a school to an inclusive form of site-based management. In the process, we were able to convince ourselves that we had a responsibility to be critical of our own teaching, and that it was our responsibility to solve the problems that we encounteredthat it wasn't anybody else's responsibility. When we realized that this was actually going to happen that if we made a decision about something, that we could actually have the power to change itit really empowered us to be more of a thinking and critical staff, a problem-solving staff. Also very important to what we were doing was that we felt that we had a great resource at our school, which was the students. We have such a diverse population, and as teachers we learn so much from them. We decided to start incorporating that into our curriculum. We wanted the literature that we used to reflect our student body, because we wanted our students to see themselves in the materials that they were reading. We know that alienation of students is something that happens quite often to limited English proficient students and students of color in general. Sometimes it's very subtlejust the fact that you don't see anybody that looks like you in the literature, or the things that you talk about at home are not important at school. We also started incorporating a few of the games that we saw on the playgroundfor example, the Cambodian students were playing a game using the four-squares that they called "One Foot." We didn't know the rules, so we had some of the fifth- and sixth-grade students come to some of the other classes during PE and teach the rest of the kids this game. I wrote up the rules and we now have it in our PE manual. There are a lot of Mexican games that can be used for PE also. We asked some

198 195 The Unfinished Journey of the parents to come in and teach them, which they did. This is an example of how we're trying to show the students that what they bring with them is invaluable, that they're not coming empty-handed; they have a lot to teach us and they have a lot to teach each other. Through that, they can learn how to read and write and have a little bit of control over their own education. The principal, who's been at Melrose for six years, is very organized and very by-the-book. She has very high standards for herself. I don't think she's missed a day in schoolexcept one day when she was in the hospital. But she doesn't expect things from other people that she doesn't actually do herself. She's the only principal that I've ever worked with that really takes her evaluation process very seriously, and takes responsibility for making sure that people are doing their jobs. So when she came to Melrose, some teachers were alienated. They weren't used to having principals come into their classrooms and evaluate, expect teachers to be out at yard duty, expect teachers to be at school when school started, and expect them to go to staff development sessions. Several teachers left that first year. I think that was the hardest year we faced. But this meant we had several positions to fill, and it brought many teachers that our principal had worked with at another school to Melrose. She also had a policy which I'd never seen before, and I've learned a lot from. That is, it's better not to fill a position, but rather to leave it vacant and get substitute teachers until you get the right person, as opposed to just getting somebody because you need a body. We wait- ed for the right people.

Whole Language Approach Because of our management team structure, we have been able tc make some budgetary decisions that, in some schools, are not possible. For example, we had a Teacher on Special Assignment position open. Instead of filling it with somebody that the district sent us, we decided to take that money and buy literature materials. I think we spent about sixty thousand dollars that year on new literature in sets of 30 or so books. I think we have about 400 titles nowhalf in Spanish and half in English. We came to that decision after a core group of teachers studied the question for a year, and then brought a proposal back to the staff. I was part of that group. We outlined the rationale for our literature based, whole language idea, and we also talked about what the state was doing in terms of the curriculum frameworks and the fact that we were going to have to go in that direction anyway, so why not empower ourselves to decide how we would go in that direction? At the end of that year, the staff voted, and it was a very high percentage-22 to 2 teachers decided to go along with it. So we had decided that we were going to move toward whole language, that we would use literature as a basis for our language arts in Spanish and English, and that we would have teams of teachers that would meet three times a month to discuss curriculum development (as well as other student issues and management team concerns). In order to follow our plan for whole language learning, we needed to buy lots and lots of literature, because we had none at that point. There were no books. All we had were textbooks, which we had decided to move away

First Person: Moyra Contreras 196 199 from in general. The district adopted a language arts reading program, but they hadn't mandated that we use it. Though they did decide that we had to buy it, there was no getting around thatso we do have the book. The series that they adopted had some reading books which we felt could be used for extended reading. I think a few of them were actually included on our core list, but most of them ended up as recreational reading in classrooms. Every classroom in our school has its own little library. It probably would have been better for us to be able to take that money that was used for those district language arts books and buy more of the literature that we were actually going to use for the reading program. We wanted to integrate the entire curriculumthe language arts, social studies and sciencethrough literature. We were trying to find books that would lend themselves to that kind of integration of curriculum. Finding the books was part of the problem. I am known to be in bookstores all the time. I read as much as I can that comes out that is new. Also, I go to Tijuana at least once or twice a year to look at Spanish language bookstores, so I know a lot about what is available. We asked teachers to give us titles of the books that they'd love to teach at each grade level. We looked at their recommendations and ordered things that they wanted, plus a lot more. We were able to use catalogues from all over the place. The first year, we had tons of books on our core listwe just couldn't pare it down. We were saying that these were the required books that you had to teach, but there were 35 books on the list, and that's an impossible task! Now we have moved away from requiring a lot of literature and toward more student-centered curriculum. We provide the students with a lot of resources, but we give them more choice as to what direction to go in and what to study. We're moving toward more attention to the process of learning, as opposed to what is learned. We want the students to become learners, as opposed to learning certain facts and information. We want to teach them how to get information. It was a nightmare when the new books started coming in. We had thousands and thousands of books, and really had not thought about how to organize them. We didn't have any space, so we took over the textbook roomtook all the textbooks off the shelves and put them in boxes. We had to stamp and number every single book, and make checkout cards for them, and develop a system for teachers to check them out. Just organizing the books took a full week. We did it in the summer, dividing them by grade level. It wasn't until last year that we actually put the titles on a database. We're still working on trying to put in more information about the books, so if teachers want to do something on neighbors or planting or sea lions, they can look under the subject and find a list of books. We still have a long way to go. It takes a lot of time. This is our fourth year of compiling the collection. Every year we've developed in new directions. It's the nature of our school to continue to look for new and better ways of doing things. When we decided that we were going to do whole language, we did a whole year of staff development because a lot of teachers didn't know how to teach in that way. We did a whole year of writing classes. We're moving towards non-graded classrooms, developmentally appropriate curriculum, and student empowerment.

197 200 The Unfinished Journey We also change the core list every year. The criteria this year was: Does the core list reflect the student body at Melrose in terms of ethnicity, life experience and gender? Are the main characters just one gender, or are we being reflective of both genders? We also ask: In terms of reading abilityis it accessible to the students at the right reading levels? Does it lend itself to work across the curriculum? Can you use this book to do social studies and science and math activities? Can you extend it into those realms? What we have found is that we cannot fully meet that criterion, because the books haven't yet been written. For example, we really would like to see more Spanish books that have African American charactersthat's something that's almost impossible to find. What we have encouraged our students to do is write books, because we knowand we want them to knowthat their experiences are not really documented in children's literature very well. For Latino kids, there are very few books about kids growing up in the Unit- ed States, and their cultural alienation. There are some at high school level and there are some for university students, but not for the elementary level reader. There's a few about Chicanos, but we also have Sal- vadorans, and Nicaraguans and Puerto Ricans, who are not Chicanos. So those are the things that we tell our students: "You need to write about this, because nobody else has written about it, and we need these books." They can write and publish their experiences, and then we can use them for our core reading. This summer, some of the students wrote some books that will be in our library. YIS FOR YAWNING WHEN One girl last year wrote an ABC book about Angel Island, which her class had studied, and it is going YOU'RE TIRED FROM WALKING. to be published by the Angel Island Society. We're also going to be selling our students' publications at our stationery store, and developing a book club or writers' club where they'll have parties when a book comes out to encourage them to continue writing.

School Structure and Staff Development We have learned so much from empowering ourselves that we want everyone to feel like they're learners and also teachers. We think we can teach our students thatthat nobody can take that away from them, no matter where they are. The principal this year got a few letters from some fifth and sixth grade students that were not happy with the instruction that was going on in one of their classrooms, and felt that they should get more rigorous curriculum. I think most of us were very happy to see that the students felt it was their responsibility to make sure that they get what they need, and that they actually not only thought it, but that they took steps to resolve that problem. One page from Josefina The Principal took the letters to the management team, but did not Alvarez's ABC book about divulge the name of the students or the teacher, and we talked in general, Angel Island, produced about what should be happening in the afternoon session. Did we think through the Publishing Center.

First Person: Moyra Contreras 198 201 it was appropriate to do flash cards to learn vocabulary? What are some other things that we can be doing to develop language in the students? What happens if you tell your students that it's because of the ESL students that you have to have that kind of curriculum? What message are you giving? We discussed and grappled with what the curriculum should be, and looked for ways to support each other in improving our delivery. The students in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades have two place- mentsone in the morning, one in the afternoon. The morning teacher is the primary language teacher. The students whose primary language is Spanish are all together in the morning, reading and writing in Spanish, because we really feel that they need to have their core subjects in their primary language. But then we have a dilemma. Because we have such a multicultural school population, an essential part of our curriculum is multiculturalism. We're one of the ones with the luxury of having all the cultures together in a forum where we can possibly create some change and understanding between people. That is also one of our major goals. So in the afternoon, students are totally integrated in the second placement. In this way, we can meet the language needs of the students and meet the social needs of the community. It was in the afternoon group that there were some problems in the eyes of the students. We are slowly making a transition over to non-graded, developmentally appropriate instruction and we will be concentrating on that as our staff development goal for next year. Last year, there was a four-five combination, and this year almost all of the classrooms are at least two grade levels. Next year, there will be a four-five-six combination of students. The teachers are doing a lot of Foxfire (see resource list) type of curriculum, and giving the students a lot of independence in how to meet the requirements. It's more student-centered. At the beginning of the year, students are told what skills they are responsible for acquiring and what content needs to be covered to address the state and district requirements. The students themselves have to organize what and how they're studying and relate it back to the requirementsthat is, what they call the "givens." Teachers are available as resources for students. In addition, there are written materials, and other adults they can turn to. In this process, we have really not brought in "experts." We have done a lot of reading on our own and a lot of visitations. Half of the staff went to Oregon to look at the way they do non-graded classrooms. Some people went to Nottingham School, and some teachers went to British Columbia to look at the Vancouver model of developmentally appropriate curriculum. We have a professional library of books for teachers that we add to every year. Teachers individually get involved in various training and workshops. Then we study things together in our staff development. In order to get outside support from the district for what we're doing, we have to be able to make very clear what our students' needs are, and have a clear plan to address those needs. I think it impresses the administrative office that we've put all that time and energy into trying to address our own needs and come up with the resources to do that. It would be very hard for someone to say "No, I think you should do this other thing instead," when you have a rationale for why you want to do what you want to do. That has helped us quite a bit. We are prepared.

202 199 The Unfinished Journey Taking Stock 66 It's hard to gauge the impact of what we're doing. Last year more We all realized that than one hundred students got trophies for perfect attendance, which means that more than 20 percent of our student body did not miss one if you're going to day of school. More than half, I believe, missed only three days or less. So we're seeing that kids want to be in school. They're more involved in open your mouth and the curriculum, as opposed to conflicts with each other. They're writing more. criticize something, At the end of last year, we found out that more than one hundred of our students scored above the sixtieth percentile on the standardized you'd better be part of tests. But it's ironic. This should have been great news, but it also meant that they were no longer Chapter I, so we lost $63,000. So here we're the solution. seeing some improvement, but the economics of the community are worsening. It's very difficult to maintain the same level of education. Last year, we lost $200,000 in our budget due to the fiscal crisis in Oak- land, so we're cutting a lot of things. I think all of these changes we've brought about have been possible because of the teachers' willingness to give of their time above and beyond what is required of a teacher, and you can't sustain that for long periods of time. ( And we haven't found ways to give ourselves breaks. I think that's having a real negative impact. Our staff is tired and maybe, compared to other schools, not excited and up. We know that we're exhausted. We've found that we have made unbelievable gains, but at great expense, and that we cannot continue the growth at that pace, because it takes so much energy just to sustain what we have. The conditions in the community have not changed. Some students still come in hungry; some students still live in a one-room place with their six, seven brothers and sis- ters. Even though their attitude is better about school and they're happy to be there, we can't block out the other conditions. We have little control over those. It's very discouraging that we have overcrowded classrooms. At our school we had a full-time nurse last year; we have no nurse time this year. The more positions we lose, the more responsibilities are put on the classroom teacher, because the kids still get sick. We recognize that we can't fix the world. There are so many responsibilities that the society has to take for children that are not being taken seriously. Our kids are the last priority in this society. Our energy as teachers only goes so far, and then it starts to affect our own homes and relationships outside of the school. Your own children begin to resent the fact that you spend more time with other people's kids than with your own, and start to feel that you care more about those other kids. Nonetheless, I think one of the most important changes that we made here at Melrose was that teachers got more power. And we took on a lot more responsibility. We all realized that if you're going to open your mouth and criticize something, you'd better be ready to do a lot more work, because you're going to have to be part of the solution. You're not going to be allowed to sit around just bad-mouthing; you've got to put some time into changing it. At one point, we had said on the management team, "You can come to the management team with your complaints, but you'd better have thought of at least one solution, because it's not going to be a bitching session. You've got to be willing to make some changes." I think that is the most important thing. You cannot impose curriculum on anybody, because you don't know what a

First Person: Moyra Contreras 200 203 teacher's going to do after they close their door. But if they have a voice in developing curriculum and a voice in where you're going, it's much more likely to happen in the classroom. So the books themselves aren't as important as the process and commitment. Of course a lot of times we're not sure where we're goingwe don't have solutions; we just know what the questions are. We come up with the best solution we can, and know that many times it will be temporary and new questions will arise. So it's very fluid, and based on change. If people have a hard time with that, Melrose is going to be a very hard place to work, because no decision there is made in concrete. You have to be flexible. And the community's changing all the time, too. You have to be able to live with change. We have learned a lot through experiments at our own school site. Last summer, we did a pilot through our demonstration schools program. All of our classrooms were mixed age in a student-centered curriculum. The theme that we developed was community. Each classroom did something different. My class along with another teacher's walked around the neighborhood and decided they wanted to do something about how filthy it seemed. So the students organized "The Neighbor- hood Sweeps." They wrote letters to the neighbors letting them know that on a given day they were going to be out there cleaning. They wrote letters to the rest of the school and the staff asking for help, and they brought in brooms and all kinds of eq-iipment from home. They spent a whole day cleaning the neighborhood. In the process, they learned a lot. On their own, they came up with schedules of which classes were going to do which areas, how to distribute the bags and the gloves. They had to write and use the computer. My class was doing everything in Spanish, and they had to translate some of the letters, working with other students to write things bilingually. One of the students decided to be the monitor, and he wanted to give awards to the kids and adults that were doing the best jobs. So he had to learn to design a graphic on the computer to make the awards. He had to develop a speech and present it along with the awards in front of the school in an assembly. The kids wanted to videotape the whole project. Then the kids decided that they wanted to make cookies to reward everybody. That was another huge project, because 150 kids participated, plus adults. They made about 600 cookies, which involved a lot of math to extrapolate from the recipe for 3 dozen. They figured that out all on their own, and bought the ingredients. We spent a whole day cooking, making cookies. Then we wrote letters to invite people and tell them when to come for the cookies. All of this together is a multicultural curriculum. I think our definition of multicultural curriculum is providing a curriculum that belongs to everyone here, and that's representative. It is also not given. The curriculum is developed and everybody has a hand in its evolution, including the students.

204 201 The Unfinished Journey CHAPTER 1 0

ADDRESSING THE LANGUAGE BARRIER

Achild's home language is of central importance in how they learn and come to know their world. The extent to which formal institutions such as schools acknowledge and respect their home language also is a key factor in how students come to understand the broader society's relationship to their home culture. For an increasingly large number of students in California schools, the language of their home is different from the language of instruction in school. Approximately one student out of every five in California public schools is an immigrant, born in another nation and speaking a language other than English.. Close to one in three California students live in a home where English is not the family's dominant language. The number of students that are designated by the schools as "limited English proficient" has more than doubled in a decade. This is the fastest growing group in the public schools of this state. In addition to immigrant chil- Almost 1 out of 5 students dren, and the children of immigrants, is an immigrant. there are native U.S. born students whose community dialect of English also differs from the English used by More than 1 out of 5 students their teachers and textbooks. These stu- is Limited English Proficient. dents include, for example, African American children who grow up in Approximately 1 out of 3 students is communities speaking Black Vernacular language minority, meaning s/he is from English. a home in which a language other than For those students who are non- English is spoken. English speaking or still only beginning to learn the English language, the prob- 411111M11111lem is a fundamental one of access to education. They cannot understand a cur- Limited English Speaking Students riculum taught in a language that they do not More Than Double in Just a Decade understand. A strong body of case law and education legislation has established the 1200 responsibility of schools to affirmatively address the language barriers faced by these 1000 limited English proficient children. More than two decades of research and innovation 800 have produced strong models of bilingual programs for elementary school limited Eng- 600 lish proficient children. The challenge of 0 .c models for secondary schools is still to be 400 adequately addressed. But the implementation of research based effective programs is 200 still far from reality due to a critical shortage of bilingual teachers, an inadequately trained 0 teaching force overall, and political ambiva- 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 lence about providing primary language instruction.

206 202 The Unfinished Journey Assurance of access to the curriculum for students who are limited English proficient is just one aspect that must be addressed, however. For all children whose home language is different from the language of instruction, whether they can comprehend school-taught English or not, respect and support for their home language is important. Recently, the Foreign Language Framework of the state of California was issued, promoting bilingualism as a desired outcome for all students graduating from California public schools beginning in 1992. And yet, while there is recognition of the responsibi;ity of schools to address the access issue, it remains a long journey to widespread acceptance of goals of language respect and bilingualism. The schools are only beginning to acknowledge and respond to the implications for education of students who face this language gap. Almost all of the debate about language policy, and almost all of the focus about language programs in schools is concerned narrowly with the problem of access for limited English proficient students. And even that debate has been mired in struggle. For more than a decade, the dialogues about language policy, bilingual education and immigration have remained intertwined with one another and steeped in a tensely polarized political climate. That climate has been frankly antagonistic during the research for this study and continuing to the present, as the Governor and others wage a campaign to blame immigrants for the breakdown of the state's social, political and economic infrastructures. In the press, immigrants' impact on the public schools has attracted particular focus. It becomes necessary, then, for California Tomorrow to make it explicit that our focus on the challenges of meeting the needs of "limited English proficient students" in no way may be interpreted as fuel for the fire that claims immigrants are responsible for overwhelming our schools and our state's ability to function. California Tomorrow has for years documented the benefits immigrants bring to our society and to our economy. In California Tomorrow's view, not only does every child have a right to an education and is it in the interests of our society to educate every child, but immigrant childrenas all childrenare a precious gift to the future. There are now three decades of case law specific to national origin language minority students, which yielded prescriptive guidelines at both federal and state levels. Research does exist in the field of second language acquisition and bilingual education, which renders some forms of instruction and experimentation inappropriate. For instance, "sink or swim" or submersion approaches are known to preclude access to the curriculum for limited English proficient students. But the very public attacks to discredit proven bilingual educational practices, followed by hotly contested debates, have led to unfortunate confusion in many schools about what is appropriate practice, and what is legal practice. Therefore, the active body of case law, language acquisition theory, and good practices research has, at best, unevenly influenced district policy and school site practices.

Principles to Guide LEP School Programs While we did not enter into our research in restructuring schools with a list of LEP program compliance items to monitor, there are some

Addressing the Language Barrier 203 207 basic underlying principles related to second language acquisition and bilingual education that we recognized as consistent with contemporary research, Office of Civil Rights decisions, and LEP case law. We were hopeful of finding restructuring schools which built upon this research, and which had begun the task of designing whole schools consistent with the following principles: 1. Non-English speaking students must have instructional support in the language they understand in order to learn unfamiliar academic content. 'Without this primary language instruction, they are effectively denied access to essential academic content. 2. Sheltered content instruction without native language support is only appropriate for students who have achieved at least an advanced intermediate level of English comprehension. 3. The best language learning takes place in low anxiety settings where learners feel comfortable taking risks and are motivated to use their new language for meaningful purposes. 4. When students are grouped for instruction all day long, for a full school year or more, solely on the basis of race, language or national origin, without clearly established entrance and exit criteria, Office of Civil Rights decisions have tended to declare that "segregation" exists. Where students dre grouped together by language for parts of a school day for purposes of targeted instruction that provides a level of access that cannot be provided in a mainstream setting, it has not been viewed as harmful segregation. 5. Bilingual instructional methodologies that employ consistent blocks of teaching time in each languagesuch as "alternate day" instruction or "preview-review"are more effective than "concurrent translation." 6. English as a Second Language instructional methodologies that are natural, content-based, communicative, interactive, and meaningful are more effective than those that are grammar based or focused on error correction and pronunciation. 7. The languages and community dialect, of all students (English and non-English speaking) should be respected within the formal program of the school.

Whole Schools Which Address LE`' Student Needs There were a few schools in our study that were successfully employing these principles within their whole school plans. Visits t() these schools were inspiring as we saw in operation that which had been declared impossible at many other schools. We visited sites where the majority of the faculty were bilingual, including the front office staff. We visited schools with carefully designed newcomer immigrant orientation programs, with supports for preliterate and unschooled immigrants, with programs for family literacy/ESL on site, and with bilingual publishing centers for students and parents alike to use. We saw one elementary school where the entire faculty was engaged in acquiring Spanish as their second language, due to a growing Spanish speaking migrant student

208 204 The Unfinished Journey population. We visited another school where every teacher on staff either di held a bilingual credential or was in training for a Language Develop- ment Specialist certificate (a California K-12 teaching authorization to Where we found provide ESL and specially designed sheltered academic instruction to LEP students). Of our 32 case study schools, nine had principals who lack of attention to were themselves bilingual, most of whom had also been bilingual classroom teachers at one time. LEP student needs, The schools which entered into restructuring with a strong expertise and commitment to bilingual students, sought in their restructuring to and omission of these infuse this knowledge and concern throughout the whole school plan. It became clear that the basic characteristics of restructuring schools students in reforms, it developing school wide vision and planning mechanisms, and focusing upon student outcomescan pave the way for removing the marginal- reflected directly on ization of special needs students. Unfortunately, however, the ten schools in our study which were able to utilize the potential to centralize LEP the lack of knowledge student needs, were the exception. about the issues of Most Schools Inadequately Address LEP Student Needs language, culture and While all schools are aware that they are required to have programs for LEP students, our research clearly documented an overall alarming second language degree of ignorance in the field about LEP students' needs, second language acquisition and bilingualism. The educational and social needs of acquisition among LEP students are being overlooked, misunderstood, viewed as incidental or secondary, and /or presumed to be the responsibility of others, such as those who were at the ESL (English as a Second Language) department or the bilingual teachers. Furthermore, LEP students' educational needs are typically the restructuring table. reduced to merely a matter of English language acquisition. Despite the movement in restructuring schools to grow from a collection of individ- PP ual classrooms and special programs into whole school plans and visions, the programs for LEP students remain marginal. There are many reasons for this. Most educators involved in designing restructuring reforms simply lack training and expertise in second language acquisition and bilingual programs, and lack understanding about the role of culture and home language in the lives of their students. Second, this has led to a lack of site-level leadership explicitly calling attention to the needs of immigrant children and youth. Third, historically there has been organizational separation and sometimes tension between bilingual or ESL educators who have the training and expertise on these issues, and "regular" or "mainstream" educatorsobstructing the sharing of perspectives and knowledge. And, finally, while there are special language development programs and grants for LEP, immigrant and newcomer students (such as Title VII), they are applied for and implemented, again, quite separately from the overall restructuring efforts in most schools. Overlooking the needs of this sizable and growing body of our school population for whom language and cultural barriers are impediments to involvement in school has not been by design or malice. Hard work, care, energy and commitment are the salient characteristics of the staffs in the schools we studied. Where we found lack of attention to LEP student needs, and omission of these students in reforms, it reflected directly on the lack of knowledge about the issues of language, culture 205 Addressing the Language Barrier 209 and second language acquisition among those who were at, the restructuring table. Only five out of 41 of the schools in our random telephone sample considered the needs of LEP students centrally in their restructuring. Nineteen appeared be wholly overlooking or giving only passing consideration to the needs of LEP students, or they were creating reforms that will be out of compliance or contrary to the research on effective programs for LEP students. This is despite an average LEP population of approximately 20 percent in these schools. In many schools, individuals would share with us '..hat they felt the "LEP issue" was really not being dealt with at all, or that creating programs for LEP students was the most difficult to address. In most of these cases, the difficulties were framed in terms of compliance or staffing barriers to creating the groupings of LEP students they desired. Teachers spoke of not having the bilingual staff needed, or not having the critical mass of a language group to justify an elementary classroom or secondary section. Atypical of most restructuring dialogue, vision and excitement were seldom the tone when discussing LEP programs. LEP students were clearly left out of reforms in many restructuring schools. In our case study sample as compared to the broader random sample telephone interviews, more schools were centered on LEP students, language and immigrant education issues, because we specifically sought schools with that focus. Overall, however, we documented the following patterns.

1. LEP programs typically existed quite apart from the restructuring effort. In the vast majority of the schools we studied, LEP programs (whether strong or weak) existed quite apart from the restructuring effort. They were neither the subject of restructuring dialogue and planning, nor were the issues facing students brought to bear in the reform plans. This was more true in secondary schools than in elementary. As one high school key planner explained: "ESL is like a school within a school. The department takes care of its own problems and has control of its own budget. We deal with all the other departments and programs through restructuring, but not special education or ESL." It was not uncommon to find that "mainstream" staff and bilin- guaUESL staff held significantly different views of what was and was not working at the school. Specifically, mainstream staff often assumed things were going well for language minority and immigrant students, whereas ESL and bilingual staff believed just the opposite. At times, mainstream staff were tremendously lacking in knowledge about LEP instructional needs. Even in some schools with large concentrations of LEP students, LEP issues were marginalized in the visions about restructuring. In other cases where schools incorporated language and cultural concerns into the restructuring agenda, there was a solid history of appropriate bilingual programs accompanied by a strong core of veteran bilingual/ESL teachers, as well as a large population of language minority students. These elements seemed to be the prerequisite for a school to incorporate language and cultural concerns into the restructuring plan.

210 206 The Unfinished Journey In the many schools lacking any of these factors, language minority Ai and immigrant concerns were left out of the vision. In schools with these factors present, LEP student needs could even be central to the Until the critical restructuring efforts. shortage of bilingual 2. In the majority of schools, restructuring innovations have not adequately addressed nor improved educational opportunities and access teachers is resolved in for limited English proficient students. California, and until all In too many schools, the innovative programs resulting from restructuring were reserved for English fluent students. As one teacher teachers have learned explained frankly: "Some teachers flat out don't want to work with ESL students, second language so we only assign them to those teachers who have approached us. It's one reason we have trouble getting the kids the classes acquisition theory and they need. And, unfortunately, a lot of the innovative teachers here don't want the extra burden of ESL kids. They're dealing skills, the restructuring with enough in just trying new teaching approaches." movement will be Just as LEP students are sidelined from school reforms, ESL teachers and bilingual administrators are also frequently not included or consult- hampered in its efforts ed during the restructuring planning process. One high school, in attempting to scale back to an essential core program, abolished its ESL to serve all students. department and referred ESL students to another school. At times, it was openly acknowledged that the reason for excluding "low level ESL kids", or "newcomer kids" or "bilinguals" was because the teachers spearhead- ing the restructuring did not have the expertise to work with students whose English skills were not already strong. Many schools have re-grouped students and teachers into "houses" or "families" to create stronger teacher-student relationships and more personalized, manageable class loads. At one school where students stayed in the same house for their full four years on campus, lower level ESL students were isolated in one classroom until they developed enough English fluency to be mainstreamed into a house. One of the immigrant students who was so placed told us: I "We are the homeless of the school. We do not get a house. When you do not speak English, you are homeless." We saw many schools that were confused about how to address language needs of LEP students within the restructuring paradigm of heterogeneous groupings. So while the rest of the school (the English-fluent student body) benefited from integrated thematic instruction, advisory periods and participation in "families" or "houses"the LEP students were placed in a separate classroom with traditional instruction. They were outside the reforms. Until the critical shortage of bilingual teachers is resolved in California, and until all teachers have learned second language acquisition theory and skills, the restructuring movement will be hampered in its efforts to serve all students. Lack of English language proficiency as a barrier to learning and to access is greatly underestimated in many restructuring schools. One example was the middle school that had built an active parent involvement committee to increase parent participation in the school. As the group enthusiastically described their creative plans for outreach, we

Addressing the Language Barrier 207 211 asked about how they addressed language with approximately 50 percent language minority parents. There was a long pause, and finally one teacher responded: "Our silence speaks for itself, doesn't it? The truth is, we never even thought about that until just now. It just never occurred to us." There was a general lack of awareness, or motivation to deal with, the barriers language constitutes to involvement for LEP students and their parents. As a result, schools are precluded from designing 1 15_11iLatie_ Tf_q_E 0 appropriate programs and involvement strategies. ,-T4Nriskt In some instances, where nalardial11617111134.11; awareness does exist, there is an attitude of being overwhelmed Z-r by the challenges. This seems particularly true of secondary schools, which have less history of policy influence and program model development. There are also fewer faculty with expertise in second language acquisition processes and in bilingual education program models at the secondary level. In many schoolseven those 71- with exciting restructuring plans Artwork by students at and wholly dedicated teachers Horace Mann Middle School, the ignorance about even the most basic principles of second language San Francisco learning is resulting in creation of "innovative" new practices that are educationally inadequate, out of compliance, and sometimes illegal (vio- lating Federal Equal Opportunity Law). For instance, we saw schools with LEP students placed in wholly English-taught classes well before they were readyin the name of not "segregating" or "isolating" them, or in the name of assuring "heterogeneous" grouping and "detracking." This effectively denied these students access to academic instruction and content. In some of these cases, bilingual instructional support could have been offered, by simply aggregating students of like need in certain classes with bilingual teachers and paraprofessional staff. We saw newly arrived non English speaking students spending day after day isolated, receiving only ESL instruction without access to academic content. We heard of newcomer students, regardless of their ability, placed in "low functioning" special education courses because the school couldn't figure out where else to put them. We visited a newly designed "transition" class for LEP fourth grade students where students were retained until they learned sufficient English to be reclassifiedall the while receiving no content instruction, just ESL all day long. The interrelated principles that seem to be most routinely overlooked are: All students, regardless of their lack of English language fluency, must be provided with access to core content classes

212 200 The Unfinished Journey Non-English speaking students require primary language instruction and support for access to content Non- and limited English speaking students need English as a second language instruction.

3. Elementary, Intermediate and High School are each unique contexts. Secondary schools appear to be having more difficulty addressing the needs of limited English proficient students. There are very few generalizations that can be made about the restructuring activities which apply equally through the grade spans of elementary, intermediate and high school. It is harder for secondary teachers or administrators to change procedures due in part to more externally initiated regulations, standards and criteria that must be addressed. Student scheduling is also more complex with each successive grade span. Simply stated, the obstacles to restructuring, are more formi- dable at each successive school level. This is particularly true 100% with regards to serving LEP stu- How Central are Issues of LanguageMinority 90% dents. Students to Restructuring? 80% Case Study Sample 1111 Elementary Some immigrant students 70% n=14 may have small or large gaps in 70% 64% IIMiddlen=8 prior schooling, creating a need 60% to make up missed learning that 50% 50% Highn=10 is not necessarily offered in the 38% high school's schedule. Unless 40% 30% there are sufficient numbers of 21% students with the same need, the 20% 13% 14% high school's departmentalized 10% 0% 111 structure and its single subject 0% III authorized teachers are not pre- Central Somewhat Not At All pared to make up for missed Central Central learning. For example, successful completion of semester long or year long courses earns a student a prescribed number of "units" towards graduation. However, if a student enrolls well after the start of the course, or must withdraw prior to completion, there is a good chance that the student will earn no units in a traditional "all or nothing" approach to issuing credits. Issuing units for smaller increments of completed coursework has been the domain of "alternative" high school programs. High drop out rates of schools with highly mobile populations are testimony to the mismatch between an "all or nothing" comprehensive high school unit structure and the demographic realities in many communities, both immigrant and non-immigrant. As mentioned, there has not been the policy attention and research on effective immigrant and language school models fo, the secondary level that there has been for elementary schools, allowing elementary schools to advance somewhat further in this arena. This is making it far more difficult for secondary schools to respond to the needs of immigrant students. Research, models, policy, infrastructure and networking arc sorely needed by the field at this level.

Addressing the Language Barrier 209 213 4. There is Confusion in Most Schools Between Equality of Treatment and Equal Opportunity and Access. There appears to be The school restructuring movement is generally deeply concerned much confusion about equity. This was frequently expressed as a commitment to assuring that neither special privileges nor differential standards would be applied regarding the concepts to any group. Thus, "high expectations for all students", "powerful learning opportunities for all students", and "heterogeneous groupings" of racial segregation and "detracking" for "all" were central components of most of the reform efforts we observed. and integration, There appears to be much confusion regarding the concepts of racial segregation and integration, heterogeneous and homogenous groupings, heterogeneous and access and equity in relation to instruction specifically targeted to meet the needs of students learning English as a second language. For exam- homogenous ple, one school in our study is being pressured to change its all English- taught program because it is out of compliance with the district's man- groupings, access and date to teach core content in the native language of students in the early stages of acquiring English. Many of the teachers oppose this because equity in relation to they feel that content classes taught in native languages for LEP students will isolate the students. In this instance, intervention from the district instruction specifically level to properly assure the civil and educational rights of LEP students, paints the district as the villain in the eyes of the school staff. In such targeted to meet cases of "wethey" polarization between district administration and school sites over compliance, lack of awareness of the research on second the needs of students language acquisition is most evident. The perspective of the school in this example draws upon words and learning English as a concepts inherited from an earlier civil rights movement which was concerned with the harmful effects of racial segregation and its accompany- second language. ing "separate but equal" doctrine. The subsequent federal mandate reflected in the Equal Educational Opportunity Act emphasized opportunity; the current reform movement focuses on equity without a substan- 77 tial understanding of how language is a barrier to equity in outcomes. The Lau v. Nichols Supreme Court ruling that "districts must take affir- mative steps to address these [language] barriers" is not yet fully understood. Whereas Brown v. Board of Education ruled with regards to racial segregation that there were harmful effects resulting from "separate" treatment, Lau v. Nichols ruled that there were harmful effects from "same" treatment where lack of English language fluency constitutes a barrier to access. More than a superficial understanding of linguistic, cultural and racial segregation as they relate to school participation is required if one is to apply these concepts to school reform. In either the absence of a profound understanding of these two landmark decisions, or in a backlash reaction to them, we noted widespread misapplication of these principles. Perhaps because race is more evident than English language comprehension to those who do not have expertise in second language acquisition, and because 98 percent of "LEP" students are persons of color, concerns about racial segregation predominate over concerns about language access in most schools. "Segregation" of any kind has come to be viewed as "bad" by many mainstream educators independent of whether the effects of separate grouping for LEP students may be beneficial. Likewise "integration" has come to be viewed as "good," also with-

214 210 The Unfinished Journey out regard to its effectseven educationally detrimental ones. While we applaud the genuine concern about isolating or segregating students, we urge full and knowledgeable examination of whether and when the effects of separation of students are beneficial or harmful, along with continued vigilance about ensuring that any separation is temporary and is based upon academic need. The real goal, the removal of barriers to a student's ability to benefit from equal opportunities, has been obscured in the confusion over race, language and culture. The integration of non- and very limited English speakers in classes designed for proficient Eng- lish speakers is bound to err by providing "same" instruction to those who are unequally able to benefit from it. Also fueling the abolishment of the very strategies (such as bilingual, ESL and sheltered classes) which are appropriate Lau remedies is a misapplication of the concepts of "heterogeneity" and "homogeneity." One of the most noteworthy and difficult efforts we observed in about half the secondary schools was the move to abolish harmful academic "tracking" practices. We in no way want to diminish the importance and value of this energetic reform effortit is necessary and should be applauded. But it, too, must be understood in its complexity. The efforts to abolish tracking are characterized by focusing on the creation of "heterogeneous" classesthat is, classes composed of students representative of a full spectrum of abilitiesfrom slow learner to gifted in the same classroom. However, in some schools we studied, sheltered and ESL sections were abolished because it was mistakenly concluded that these were not "heterogeneous" groupings of students. In fact, just because. a group of students have something in common such as being ESL students or being Chinese speakers, does not mean they are all of the same ability level. Even a beginning ESL class, where everyone may appear to perform similarly in English, is composed of a full ability range from slow learner to gifted. Segregation, integration, isolation, access, equityare taking on new connotations in the context of multi-ethnic, multi-lingual schools of the nineties. In restructuring reform, too often there is a simplistic equation: detracking is a yes, segregation is a no, integration is a yes, isolation is a no, unity is a yes, separation is a no. But students will only be well served to the extent schools grapple with an understanding of civil rights and equal educational opportunity in the context of the research and knowledge about second language acquisition specifically, and language and culture in schooling overall. In the vast majority of the schools we studied, thoughtful and reflective staff were genuinely confused about how best to deliver services. When asked about immigrant or LEP students, people volunteered that the school was having difficulty figuring out how best to serve them within the reform structures. Some schools with significant expertise and commitment to issues of second language acquisition are creatively grappling with this issue. Hawthorne Elementary School in Oakland is a year round school with more than half of the students designated as LEP. Because the students are of many different language groups, two tracks were designated as Asian bilingual, and two tracks Spanish bilingual. This consolidated staff expertise, but the faculty was also concerned about school climate and helping students learn skills for living in a diverse society. A committee was formed to think about reorganizing the bilingual program and the

Addressing the Language Barrier 211 215 tracks. They decided to mix the languages on each track and experiment with team teaching across language groups. For example, a teacher of a Lao/Mien bilingual class would team teach with the teacher of a Spanish bilingual class. The classrooms would be buddied for special activities each day, thus creating more integration, more exposure to the diversity of the community, and closer alignment in the curriculum of the language groups.

5. In Most Schools, the Thrust of LEP Programs is to Replace the Home Language with English; Few Embrace the Goals of Bilingualism. The California Business Roundtable's report Restructuring California Schools, one of the blueprints for California's restructuring movement, called for bilingualism for all children as a goal of California public education. The rationale was California's competitiveness in a global economy. In theirs and many other people's visions of a strong diverse society, all students would achieve bilingualism. Yet this vision is only occasion- ally present in the goals developed by most restructuring schools. In a number of our case study schools, it was characteristic to find a high level of knowledge of the contents of certain state curricular frame- workslanguage arts, scimce and math all were frequently cited by educators, teachers and administrators as major influences in their restructuring. Nonetheless, even in schools where frameworks were waved high as sources informing their practices, the Foreign Language /English as a Sec- ond Language Framework is not well known. In many instances, key curricular leaders were totally unaware of this framework. Of significance is that the framework promotes bilingualism as a desired outcome for all students graduating from California public schools beginning in 1992. Only four schools in our sample of 73 actively work to promote bilingualism. Two of these are immersion or dual language schools. All are elementary schools. And, with these exceptions, no school awards or recognizes LEP students who develop fluency in English and achieve proficient bilingualism.Incontrast, high school English speakers who master a second language as evidenced by the Advanced Placement foreign language exams are recognized. There is, thus, a double standard about bilingualism. Instead, English proficiency is overtly verbalized as the sole language development goal for "LEP" students. What is seldom understood is the fact that successfulnativelanguage development is the strongest foundation and basis for a child's English language devel-

216 212 The Unfinished Journey opment as well. Furthermore, English proficiency is typically accompanied by atrophy, and sometimes even eradicati 3n, of a child's native language if there are not very strong active efforts to honor, develop, use and reward Restructuring is proficiency in the native tongue as well. This is called "subtractive bilingualism". As students become increasingly fluent in English, they cease using an opportunity to and then lose their fluency in their mother tongue. Individual staff members in more than one school where bilingual become infused with education was officially endorsed told of incidents in which fellow faculty members, either individually or collectively, aggressively opposed pro- knowledge about posals that might elevate the status of Spanish or other non English languages at the school. One of these "silenced" proposals would have culture, immigration granted college preparatory credit for a high school course in Spanish literature. The preVailing dissent was that this would be unfair since many and language educa- of the school's students were already native Spanish speakers. Even when proponents offered the parallel logic of native English speakers earning tion, but there is an college preparatory credit for English, objectors were unmoved. Another defeated suggestion would have issued merit certificates to overall absence of students who had achieved proficiency in both English and Spanish. Despite the argument that these could enhance employment opportuni- partnerships with ties for high school job seekers, the idea was voted down by a majority of the staff. In this climate, "bilingual" language policies of restructuring the very people and schools are almost wholly leading to subtractive rather than additive language skillssubstituting one language for another, potentially destroy- institutions that could ing the first language altogether rather than proactively promoting and supporting the ability to be fluent in two languages. well provide that Furthermore, only one of the schools in our study was actively involved in nurturing and bringing into the classroom the community expertise. dialects of the students. Melrose Elementary School in Oakland, as part of their commitment to honoring children's home languages and broad- PI ening the realms and forms of expression, encourage African American children to use their East Oakland dialect of English whenever they wish in writing or speaking. The literature that fills the shelves of the classroom purposely include books written by authors and poets from many language and dialect communities.

Conclusions Some research and reform models do inform restructuring schools; but schools are not yet sufficiently immersed in the research, professional development options and reform projects which focus upon issues of language, culture and immigration. Restructuring schools are wonderfully committed to basing their practice on research, and to seeking professional development to enhance their capacity to implement reforms. Most are connected to a support infrastructure of coaches and technical assistance as well. They get many of their reform ideas from a relatively small set of highly visible and publicized restructuring schools, from the popular general education press, as well as from professional development activities they happen upon and/or are popular. Many of the ideas and concepts most promoted through these channels (e.g., cooperative learning, integrated thematic instruction, "families", block scheduling, etc.) are also embraced by the bilingual education field. However, in very few schools was the research

Addressing the Language Barrier 217 7.1f4 about second language acquisition, effective programs for language minority students or bilingual education, or the needs of immigrant students, present among the theoretical and practical models adopted through restructuring. The bilingual education field remains largely marginalized from the school restructuring field. The policy debates, the professional dialogues of these two important reform movements occur separately. There is little crossing over that might inform the school restructuring movement of cutting edge knowledge regarding language and culture. And there is little of the cross fertilization that might inform the bilingual education movement of the powerful lessons of the restructuring movement about how to bring about whole school change. Both movements suffer from the lack of connection. And, as a result, in the majority of schools in this research, restructuring reforms were bypassing the needs of immigrant and language minority students, and even in some cases eroding programs which had been designed to meet their unique needs. It will take specific leadership, professional development and broad dissemination of the research on second language acquisition to support schools in understanding and addressing the critical issues of access, equity and appropriate education for immigrant and limited English proficient students, and to create schools that affirm and develop the home languages of all of their students.

218 214 The Unfinished Journey SCHOOL PROFILE Windsor Elementary: A Two-Way Spanish Immersion School

Program Description Windsor Elementary is a two -way K-8 Spanish immersion school providing both English speaking and Spanish speaking students the opportunity to acquire fluency in two languages. The goals of the program include: fluency in communication and literacy in both English and Spanish for all students; academic achievement in all subject matter for all students; and cultural appreciation and understanding. The educational program design, curriculum and teaching methods being applied by staff at the school are deeply rooted in the latest of educational research, philosophy and theory on how children learn. All students are heterogeneously grouped according to gender, perceived ability, and native language, and are taught by a team of grade level teachers. Designed to integrate Latino, Spanish-speaking students into the mainstream, the program incorporates educational strategies such as cooperative learning, interdisciplinary team teaching, and language teaching techniques such as sheltered Spanish and sheltered English. More specifically, both monolingual Spanish, and monolingual English speaking students in grades K, 1 and 2, are taught subject matter in Spanish without translation, and receive oral English language development for 20-40 minutes daily. Students in grades 3 and 4 continue to receive subject matter in Spanish, with English literacy formally being introduced while maintaining Spanish literacy. Students in grades 5-7 receive instruction in English and Spanish in equal amounts. In this way, students develop language skills in both Spanish and English. In class, students speak with one another and the teacher in either language they choose; the teacher responds to the child in the language of instruction. Students in grades 5-7 receive instruction in Spanish and English at separate times of the day from teachers who maintain a monolingual role. The program currently enrolls approximately 580 students; one-third are immigrant, dominant Spanish speaking; one-third are second generation Latino English speaking students; about one-third are Anglo, and there are a few Asian and African American students. The school sits in the middle of the fastest growing community in Sonoma County. Formerly a rural agricultural community with a large population of migrant farmworkers, it is rapidly becoming more industrial and more middle class; with a boom in commercial and housing development occurring during the past two to three years. Generally a two-culture community, nearly 19% of the population is Latino, while the other portion are mostly Anglo.

215

220 The Unfinished Journey History Both the low academic achievement of Latino students, and the sense by some teachers and parents that the home language of Spanish speaking students was at-risk of being lost, served as impetus for curriculum change in the bilingual program. This group searched for programs with strong native language instruction and support, knowing it was essential for students to succeed in school. A few of the bilingual teachers and one parent learned about two-way Spanish immersion theory and practice, and then chose to work to create such a program within Windsor School. These school restructuring efforts at Windsor began about the same time as the school's governance structure was evolving to include more parents, students and teachers in the decision-making process. Teachers wanted parents to feel welcome at the school, but many parents were feeling neglected during the initial discussions regarding the immersion program. Hence, in the tradition of union organizing, teachers and parents (English and Spanish speaking alike), students, and community leaders joined forces in forming the Partnership School Committee to promote the change in the bilingual program from transitional to two-way Spanish immersion, to be culturally and linguistically supportive of their children. The goal of the Partnership School Committee was to bring parents and teachers together for ensuring educational success for the students by creating an environment that promotes bilingualism and focuses on the whole child. There was a long and bitter dispute between the Windsor teachers and parents supportive of the immersion program, and those unsupport- ivethe school board, some district administrators and community members. Opponents argued that an immersion program would segregate students and that as a "special" program it would take funds away from other regular education programs, questioned the effectiveness of the proposed program, and thought the program would violate Proposi- tion 63the state's English only law. The school district expected the Spanish speaking population to dwindle with the decrease in farm labor in the area, though it didn't. Further, many monolingual English speaking teachers felt threatened that they would loose their jobs. Some Latino and Anglo parents, worried that their children would not learn Eng- lish quickly enough anu/or succeed in school, removed theirchildrenfromthe immersion program and enrolled them in the English- only Windsor school. The Proponents, armed with research and data on second language acquisition, argued that the plan did not create segregation because it called for a 50/50 mix of non-English Spanish speaking

School Profile: Windsor Elementary School 216 BEST COPY AVAILABLE 221 students together with English non-Spanish speaking students in one classroom learning together. The teachers and parents favoring the plan Teaching staff and also argued that the immersion program would not require any less or any more money to fund, and that research on bilingual education in fact parents who worked demonstrates that instruction in a child's native language is the most appropriate and effective means of teaching limited English proficient so hard and advocated students. The school board and district finally approved the implementation of for the new immersion the immersion program as a pilot, while maintaining an English only program at the schoolessentially resulting in the immersion pilot and program feel a sense of the old English-only program operating on the same school site. The Windsor immersion program has since expanded as enrollment has empowerment from increased, and moved into its own school. However, fueled by continued misperceptions and lack of understanding of immersion theory, contro- having won the fight versies persist within the community over the effectiveness of Windsor's Spanish immersion program. for implementation of Nevertheless, Windsor's teaching staff and the vast majority of parents in the Partnership School Committee who worked so hard and the program. advocated for the new immersion program feel a sense of empowerment from having won the fight for implementation of the program. Parent involvement at the school has increased substantially, with parents becoming active in all aspects of schoolingincluding volunteering in school or classroom activities, and participating in school as well as district decision-making. According to school board member and parent Cher ly Ziff: "There was a whole new spirit when Spanish speaking parents began to work together with English speaking parents and vice- versa. Now, there are more and more Spanish speaking parents helping in the classroom, and many are starting to feel comfortable at the school."

Curriculum and Educational Program The dual language immersion curriculum requires new materials. Title II Foreign Language grant funds were used to develop initial materials to implement the immersion program. Grade level teachers working in teams take primary responsibility for developing the program's new curriculum and materials, sharing teaching strategies, and being of support to one another. All teachers are fully bilingual fluent and literate in both Spanish and English. Teacher training is a significant component of Windsor's restructuring plan, especially given that the school has had to double its staff to accommodate the popularity of the program. Program staff, including new teachers, receive ongoing training and support to ensure that the instructional strategies laid out in the school's immersion manual are implemented by all teachers in all classrooms. According to Title VII Coordinator Ginger Dale, Windsor had to seek several district waivers when implementing their restructured plan for a two-way immersion program. The school sought a waiver from the district to he able to control its own in-service days, in order to provide for t',.!ir own specifically needed curriculum training. In addition, the scho )l sought numerous waivers to be able to hire various staff: instructional aides who had passed their Spanish proficiency, but not their Eng-

222 217 The Unfinished Journey lish proficiency test; a qualified and much needed kindergarten bilingual teacher who had not passed the CBEST (she eventually did); and a bilingual teacher who could also teach music, but did not have a music credential. Finally, the school received a waiver to allow for library committees to select and purchase new books and reading materials, including reading material in Spanish. Recognizing the need to assess educational achievement, the staff have created tests in both Spanish and English, and are developing a portfolio-based assessment tool. Many staff find that the currently used standardized test is not a valid assessment measure because it does not effectively match with the new curriculum, and is not normed towards students enrolled in an immersion program of this kind. Furthermore, existing standardized tests don't measure bilingualism. According to Ms. Dale, more than 50% of both Spanish and English speaking students are above the 50th percentile in math, although English test scores are not at grade levelattributed to the fact that the CTBS is given only in English. Results from La Prueba (the Spanish equivalent of the CTBS) indicate that students are improving academically. Ms. Dale adds: "The staff is finding that since restructuring and beginning the immersion program, attendance has improved and there seems to be an increase in student self-confidence." And yet, there are still questions the school is mulling over. School board member Cher ly Ziff explains that: "Students are achieving better than they used to... Latino students are doing phenomer ally better, but English speaking students are doing better than Latinos and are picking up Spanish very well, and outperforming the Spanish speaking students even in Spanish." Principal John Lehmann suggests that some of the difference in performance stems from the fact that the level of academic and skills development are not the same for the Spanish speaking and English speaking students. He added that it is important to remember that the students and the community are benefitting from the program, because it's embedded in the cultural and linguistic reality in which students live. In addition, the school has created and reinforces an "open" school atmosphere where parents can see and be a part of their children's classroom. Mr. Lehman explained that it is still too soon to get good, solid longitudinal data on the impact of the immersion program. They estimate that it will be another three to four years because there is an "implementation dip" from the time a program is implemented to the time that students can validly be evaluated or assessed to determine individual or program success. He is encouraged, however, that authentic portfolio assessment will begin to provide a more valuable instrument for evaluating individual student success. In John Lehmann's words, "The program is a sapling tree that is still growing." As part of their school reform, Windsor has implemented Even Start, a federally funded program to provide support and outreach to the families of children attending the school, and ultimately to strengthen home- school and community relationships and partnerships. Even Start provides parents with education workshops and child development classestraining in parental skills, discipline, nutrition. "how to read a

School Profile: Windsor Elementary School 218 223 report card", self-esteem building for children, and encouraging children's self-expression. To support the immersion program, parents are trained on how to build a home library for their children through the Padres, Libros y Ninos component of Even Start. This program is a literacy development project in which parents and their children together learn to read and write. Weekly childcare for young children is also provided to parents attending such workshops or classes. Teacher Julie Moore-O'Brien is the Even Start Coordinator and receives assistance from Yolanda Ronquillo, the liaison between the community services sector and families. Ms. Ron quillo responds to the needs of the families by making referrals to community agencies and organizations. Unfortunately, families currently must travel some distance north to receive health and other social services through agencies in Healdsburg. Therefore, the school is looking for ways to expand Even Start by implementing school-linked services to better meet the non-educational needs of students and their families.

Conclusion There were many challenges in getting Windsor's two-way immersion program implemented. However, the partnership between teachers and parents, and the commitment of teachers to supporting the culture and language of their students have contributed significantly to the program's success thus far. A common vision was forged among teaching staff and parentsto unify Latino and Anglo students and parents; to break down barriers that existed in the community and make the school the hub of the community; and to support the success of all of the children. Windsor's future success depends on: their ability to recruit qualified Spanish immersion teachers, ongoing professional development and training for incoming teachers in the immersion program's philosophy, and the school's ability to demonstrate educational excellence and gain community-wide support.

?19 224 The Unfinished Tourney C H A13 T-E R11

NEW USES OF TECHNOLOGY

On the day of a California Tomorrow visit, the library at Paul Revere Elementary School in San Francisco bustled with fourth graders browsing through books and consulting with the librarian about their research projects. One girl, a Chinese American, sat intently working on one of the computers. She was constructing a HyperCard stack for her research report, entitled "Great Women". Her cards were headed: Margaret Mead, Mary "Cassette", Amelia Earhart, Rosa Parks. The librarian leaned over and suggested that one of the names might be spelled incorrectly. The girl frowned slightly and deftly switched to a computerized encyclo- pedia reference system to check her facts. Within Mary Cassatt's entry, she discovered not only a correct spelling, but several additional facts she wanted to add to her stack, and switched back into Hypercard to enter them. The girl explained that when she was done she would put it into the school data base so later other students can use her research: "That's why it needs to be done right.If itwas just for me it wouldn't matter so much. But I'm doing research that other people will use, and they'll add onto it and other kids can add onto it. And someday we'll have a humungous file on Great Women!"

In 1990, Revere was awarded one of twenty grants nationwide by the Apple Computer corporation to focus upon school wide curricular change through the uses of computer technology. The grant trained a core group of teachers in computers, and they then designed the elements of what they felt a strong curriculum might be. They decided on a literature-based, thematic interdisciplinary curriculum utilizing cooperative learning groups. The Apple grant provided joint planning time as well as release time to enable teachers to be trained in uses of computers. This training has included use of the Macintosh LC, HyperCard, MediaMaker, MacroMind Director and Laserdiscs. Each member of the original core group eventually selected a partner teacher to train. Cen- tral to the entire effort was the school librarian, one of the few staff members at the school with any previous computer skills. It was this technological project that laid the groundwork for the curricular changes within the school's restructuring. The use of computer technology has now spread to ten classrooms, all equipped with at least three Macintosh computers. 226 220 The Unfinished Journey MN

When the California Business Roundtable report, Restructuring California Education was released in 1988, a major area of recommendations focused upon enabling all schools to integrate technology into instruction and management. The argument was based on a belief that educational technologies could revolutionize the entire teaching and learning process, improve achievement, motivate students and make learning more exciting and accessible to different kinds of learners. Technology could create the possibility of very different, more productive roles for teachers, freeing them from time spent traditionally on bookkeeping tasks, etc. The report called for new information systems and well-designed instructional modules to give students rapid access to multi-media learning resources. The promise was enormous. As a result of these recommendations, coupled with the growing call for students to be prepared with computer skills for the workforce of the 21st Century, the California state Legisla- ture responded. Along with SB 1274, the restructuring bill that grew from the Roundtable's recommendations (see Chapter 1), new legislation was also passed to enhance the technological competency of teachers and schools. There are numerous state level initiatives and grants available to school districts to increase the availability of and interaction with new technologies. These opportunities are putting technology on the agendas of restructuring schools. One half of the schools in our study were trying new uses of technology within their restructuring efforts, while four of the case study schools were centrally focused on technology as key to restructuring. Half a dozen sought and won state AB 1470 funds, sometimes in addition to their other restructuring funds, to support a major push on new technologies. Several garnered federal Title VII funds or corporate or foundation funds to purchase both equipment and training. This push for new technologies is largely in response to pressure from the business community, the funding community and parents. Businesses and cor- porations, through partnerships with schools related to career pathways and career education, are emphasizing basic computer and technological literacy. They are donating equipment and training as part of this commitment. Many schools also indicated that parents were strongly asserting concern about their children's skills and capabilities for entering the future labor force. Electronic technologies are opening the potential

New Uses of Technology 227 221 nrci (Tin, AVAII ARl F ig for new pedagogical approachesgreater flexibility, greater individual- ization, greater student independence, etc. This is important as students The opportunity become the directors of their own learningallowing them to build upon their own knowledge base. This preparation is particularly impor- to access data tant for children who do not receive exposure to computer technology at home. To address concerns regarding equal access, as well as concerns beyond the reach about preparation for a 21st century workforce, schools must design technology plans which consider equity. of the school site, For teachers from cultures, languages and races different from their students, computer technologies and the access to a wealth of informa- to capture and store tion can be powerful. Technology carries with it the promise of expanding the capacity of the school to teach a much fuller array of knowledge student research and human experience in response to student inquiry. The opportunity to access data bases beyond the reach of the school site, to capture and based on their own store student research based on their own communities and lives, and to process a wide breadth of answers to questions generated by diverse stu- communities and lives, dents, all add immeasurably to the capacity of schools to provide meaningful multicultural curriculum. Electronic technologies can free teaching and to process a wide and learning from the constraints of single textbooks and the limits of a small school library. breadth of answers A few schools are recognizing this promise. Their new technologies are directly intertwined with their vision of a multicultural and global to questions generated curriculum. Satellite hook-ups, distanced learning, networking with students around the globe all become part of how these schools are working by diverse students, to help their students become global citizens. But technology is both expensive and requires extensive new training all add immeasurably for most teachers. Technology is a new medium for instruction and its use becomes a learning processnot just for the students, but for the to the capacity of teachers as well. In many schools, teachers and students are simultaneously involved in learning how to use the medium. Therefore, an infra- schools to provide structure of support and training becomes crucial. In fact, those schools which had a major focus upon technologies within their restructuring meaningful multicultural had received special grant funds to purchase equipment, and were seeking ties into training and support networks. The Apple Christopher curriculum. Columbus Consortium, Galaxy, university partnerships, and others provided this support. 77 But not every school can receive such support in the current competitive grant system. And even within schools, frequently new technologies are restricted to a small pilot effort due to lack of equipment and training to expand to all teachers and all students. In our school site visits, inequities between those schools with the resources and training for technology and those without were apparent. Problems of who had access to the technology within school sites were also noted. And, there can be significant differences in technological skills development between students from families that own and regularly use computers for education and recreation, etc., and students from families who do not own a computer. Some schools, aware of these problems, are focusing upon the equity of new technologies. Home access to electronic technology is dependent upon the financial means of familiesto acquire hardware and software. Four scho'ils in this study were creating computer home loan programs, and providing parent computer training workshops for families without previous access to these technologies to develop skills and familiarity. For

228 222 The Unfinished Journey example, through Hawthorne Elementary School's "Computer Home Loan Program", both students and parents have opportunities to hone their computer skills. The school hopes that helping parents become more familiar with computers will build roads to their greater involvement in their children's education. The program also aims to assist in the development of literacy skills for the whole family. To make computer usage relevant to the many students and families whose strongest language is not English, the school's computer lab has also installed multilingual disks for CD ROM which can read stories to children in four languages. But the search for more software in Spanish is ongoing, as Jill Krause, computer teacher, explains: "This becomes important. Right now the computers are mostly for English speakers. Spanish speakers sit next to the English speakers and catch on pretty quickly. But we need more software in Spanish, and it's not so easy to find." Carr Intermediate School in Santa Ana also recognized the importance of directly addressing uses of technology for their large limited English speaking student population. Located in a low income area of southwest Santa Ana, the school serves 1,750 studentspredominant- ly Latino with a large percentage of immigrants. Carr's history is one of involvement in a large number of reform initiatives. In addition to receiving both AB 1470 Technology funding and a special multi-year Title VII grant for technology and language development, Carr is involved in a Global Education Partnership with other schools, which utilizes the technology capacity of the school. The target group for Carr's technology effort is its limited English proficient Latino students. The CLAVES (Computer Literacy Acquisition Via Educational Strategies) program is designed to improve and accelerate the students' acquisition of English language skills and access to new subject matter content while Drawing by a student at developing new processing skills. Students develop computer literacy Melrose Elementary School both through the use of primary language in the content areas, and Eng- lish language development. The curriculum also focuses on smoothing the transition from Spanish to English. Technological skills cross languages, and the language of the computer becomes a means of transition. Thus, CLAVES relies on computer hardware with bilingual capabilities. District computer experts and consultants have helped to develop the needed software. But as innovative and exciting as such efforts appear, in most schools we visited, LEP students are almost wholly excluded from the emphasis on uses of new technologies. Without specific planning and instruction, students with limited English proficiency are excluded from full participation when computers program are only in English. Also, in a couple of high schools, the magnet students, not fully representative of all the ethnic groups within the school, had exclusive access to the most expensive and exciting new technology. And overall, we found the training and

New Uses of Technology 2 23 229 equipment grants that have enabled some schools to begin to realize the promise of new technologies in addressing issues of diversity are far too In most schools few to go around. we visited, Principle Uses of Technology LEP students There were three distinct goals articulated by schools in the introduction of technology: are almost wholly To enhance administrative capacity. excluded from the To enhance instruction. To give students opportunities to develop new technological skills. emphasis on uses of new technologies Administrative and Networking Uses In the midst of restructuring schools' search for new approaches to management, several schools were looking to new technologies for more efficiency in bookkeeping, teacher communications, teacher information systems, and other administrative or networking tasks. For example, in its new restructured governance system, Argonne Elementary School in San Francisco established the Argonne Council of Technological Acquisi- tion and Continuing Education (ACT), among other chartered councils. The ACT is charged with exploring new technological components for the furtherance of learning, instruction and school management. Peter Huang, parent of a first grader at Argonne, is one of the major advocates behind Argonne's technology thrust, serving as facilitator of the ACT council. One of the council's immediate tasks was to establish a computer network among parents so they could communicate with each other and with the school site. "For parents, this is a particularly effective way to get involved. Through networking we can move faster to feeling like real partners with the school and the teachers. We can keep in touch at our own convenience by checking electronic mail. The whole medium facilitates the transmission of information. Questions parents have can be answered quickly with the networking system. You don't have to wait for a parents meeting." Mr. Huang was quick to add, however, that lack of funding was impeding setting up the network the way they might wish. Many parents lack computers. The school has had more immediate success in linking teachers with other schools involved in restructuring. Artesia High School has a new database system, MICROGRADE, for monitoring student progress. Teachers record student test grades, completed homework assignments and other measures of student

M-1

Drawing by Jorge Carapia, Melrose Elementary School

230 224 The Unfinished Journey progress. At regular intervals teachers post printouts of student grades and information so that students can monitor their grade average for each class and check what assignments they have yet to turn in. This builds student responsibility for their own progress, and provides crucial communication between teachers and students that may not be possible on an individualized basis in the few minutes before and after each class. Wilson Middle School San Diego makes use of its computer system to monitor school wide progress in the areas of student participation and achievement. The administration carefully tracks suspensions, unexcused absences and grade point averages by gender, ethnicity and grade level for input into their program planning and for prioritizing areas of attention. Kimiko Fukuda, the principal, said, "The only way to really look at issues of diversity is grounded in data." The school also has plans to use computers to improve staff communication and management. Their vision is that eventually every classroom will be equipped with a computer and modem that will enable teachers to create recordkeeping systems, correspond with parents and communicate with colleagues. They are trying to connect their staff to the University of California at San Diego electronic mail system to seek advice, solve problems in a collaborative modality, and connect to other existing educational networks.

Technology as Teaching Tool Most schools in our study that were heavily investing in technology did so to support new avenues of teaching and learning. Computer assisted instruction has been used for more than a decade, although in limited ways such as helping students gain rudimentary skills learned through rote techniques. While remnants of this linger, most restructuring schools generally are envisioning more creative and interactive approaches with computers. For example, we found widespread use of HyperCard, CD Rom and laser disk technologies to enhance student research projects and to facilitate student writing. The mission statement of O'Farrell Community Middle School in San Diego placed instruction in technology as one of its guiding goals: "It is the mission of O'Farrell Community School for all students and teachers to use technology to enhance teaching and learning in an interdisciplinary curriculum." This included a commitment to providing students with the opportunity to complete core assignments and projects using a variety of technology processes, and to promote communication networks within and beyond the school that are accessible by students and community members. A twelve person Technology Committee oversees this effort. As part of this, O'Farrell teachers have participated in a magnet technology training programa joint effort by the San Diego School District and the San Diego State University Department of Educational Technolo- gy. The entire school site has been set up for networking so teachers and students can communicate directly through e-mail, students can have access to their work from anywhere in the sci.00l, everyone can connect to the library and other information resourcs, and teachers can connect to a central data system to access student records. But the biggest impact of technology at O'Farrell has been on curriculum. Seventh and eighth grade classrooms at O'Farrell are 225 New Uses of Technology 231 multi-graded and the curriculum is interdisciplinary. The vision is to provide a single advanced academic curriculum to all students. To achieve this, staff utilize a student-centered, activity oriented learning program with state-of-the-art technology and cross curricular planing. The back- bone of the curriculum is student projects and portfolios designed for each quarterly thematic unit by teams of teachers. Students utilize the "Micro Worlds" HyperCard system. They choose to work within one of four civilizations, selected to reflect the ethnic/cultural backgrounds of O'Farrell students. These civilizations include: the Philippines in 1521; Mali in 1324; Florence in 1348; and Baghdad in 825 A.D. Students worked in teams of two in their social studies and other classes to research each period's occupations, government, language, measurement system, trading system, homes, food, clothing, religion, pastimes, climate, geography, transportation, weapons, tools and historic figures. In language arts classes, they read and discussed the elements of an epic adventure and created overall story lines for the culture and time period they were studying. In computer classes, students learned to use HyperCard and generate art work for their Micro Worlds project. In math, students reviewed each civilization's number system and calendar.

Future Skills Building To some degree, most schools with a technology component to their restructuring are concerned with helping students develop computer literacy and technological skills for the future. Particular schools, however, make this a central focus. Not surprisingly, these tend to be secondary schools. Artesia High School is one example. The large comprehensive school serves 1,800 students grades 9-12 in Los Angeles county. The school has had a stable, long-term faculty with a history of serious professional development and strong instructional leadership from within. The use of technology is one of their strengths. Their Technology Task Force was started nine years ago, predating the formal restructuring effort. Faculty were concerned about the need to expose their students to new technologies, and feared that too many students were not prepared to meet the demand of a high-tech work world. They wanted their students to know how to use computers as tools to access information, as well as become familiar and comfortable with how technology itself works. As one teacher explained: "It's not just that we want kids to learn to use the computers, though that is a centrally important thing. It's also that we want them to learn! And the computer is a tool for that. It can be so responsive, can use animation, is a whole different way of handling and accessing information." Before school, during snack and lunch time, and as late after school as students need it, the computer lab is open. To establish this main computer lab for their school, all departments contributed a set amount of funds to a common pot. Many classrooms also sport Macintosh computers and video discs players. All students in the course of their Artesia years are to learn to create a data base and spread sheet, to do word processing, as well as how to manipulate data on a computer and put it into graphic form. Also, each 226 232 The Unfinished Journey student must prepare one paper each year that is completely computerized in its presentation of data. Six teachers have now completed their masters in computer education, and ane is working on his Ph.D. in computer education. The school is now planning a move to career pathways. While each of the five pathways has a technology component, some are explicitly and centrally focused upon uses of technology. The Business, Marketing and Computer Application pathway, the Language, Communication Arts and Media pathway, and the Natural and Applied Science and Industrial Technology pathways will provide students with opportunities to do advanced work in the technologies specific to those fields. Similarly, Florin High School in Sacramento is moving towards the creation of career pathways. Their technological focus is supported by the fact that the Florin school site facility was designed from scratch to be a 21st Century school. The technological requirements of that vision were built into every classroom which has as standard equipment: a T.V., VCR, cable hookup, and telephone. A fully equipped television studio offers training to students in all aspects of video production, and trains students to produce and broadcast programs over cable television throughout the area. In industrial technology, the school has moved from teaching traditional woodshop, metal shop and auto shop to courses such as computer assisted drafting, exploring technology and energy power, and transportation. The school has also developed a course called "Principles of Technology", a hands-on applied physics course. Computers are available for checkout into classrooms and a By Oscar Hurtado, Oceana computer lab is accessible to every classroom. High School

A Question of Equity There is little question that schools' reexamination of teaching and learning processes is leading to great consideration of new uses of technology. And, technology offers the potential for addressing some of the challenges of diversity and access. As with other areas of reform examined in this study, where there is expertise in second language acquisition and knowledge of how issues of culture and race affect the life experiences of students, new technologies are being used to address basic issues of diversity. But where that knowledge and expertise is not present among the educators introducing and shaping the use of new technologies, it appears that such technologies may only exacerbate old inequities in accessby creating programs that are not accessible to or useful to students who are not proficient in Eng- lish, or by doing nothing to address the considerable differential access students have to new technologies in their lives outside of school. The field will need to address this need for expertise as well as the considerable resource shortage if we are to enable restructuring schools to develop the promise of technology in a diverse society. 227 New Uses of Technology 233 OPPORTUNITIES IN SCHOOL TECHNOLOGY

Following are some of the state level initiatives. projects and grants that some schools are accessing to enhance their use of technology in administration and curriculum. These kinds of programs are keeping technology on the agendas of restructuring schools.

AMTEC The Academic Model Technology Education Coalition (AMTEC) is a coalition of seven Academic Model Technology Programs located at schools and funded by the California Department of Education. These model technology sites were originally funded in 1987 under Assembly Bill 803 to demonstrate to educators statewide how to integrate appropriate technologies into specific curriculum areas and grade levels. Schools at all grade levels are involved and the curriculum areas include language arts, mathematics, history/social science and science. After two years of development, AMTEC projects were certified to be in alignment with the State Curriculum Frameworks by the California Department of Education and were subsequently funded for dissemination. Schools participating in AMTEC have integrated a variety of technologies to enhance teaching and learning including: simulations, CD-ROM, robotics, hands-on activities, videodiscs, etc. AMTEC is linked to the California Technology Project's regional consortia, curriculum projects and business partnerships. AMTEC provides support for site visitations, curriculum/technology staff development, grant writing consultation and assistance, AB 1470 grant evaluation and assistance, and summer institutes. AMTEC products include teacher training and student instructional videotapes, student product vignettes, model curriculum lessons, hardware/software resource guides and evaluation instruments, which are available to all California schools.

GALAXY The Galaxy Classroom program was launched in 1989 when Hughes Air- craft provided the money for and created the Galaxy Institute for Education. The focus of the program is creating global classrooms. The concept is to make use of the power of communication satellites, television and interactive technology to enhance rather than replace the teacher's basic curriculum. The schools participating are linked with two way data and one way video communications systems, supplemented by faxes, television sets and VCRs to bring the outside world into the classroom and the classroom out into the world. Thus, students from around the country (and world) can communicate with one another. Teachers also have the opportunity to exchange experiences, solutions to problems and innovative classroom strategies and become familiar with the most recent and significant developments in learning and teaching. The program has targeted the K-5 grade levels because studies have shown that this is when the highest payoff for an educational investment may occur the years when attitudes toward learning and school are being developed. The project focuses on the subjects of science and English/language arts, with additional core subjects, such as math. history/social science, visual and performing arts, and comprehensive health to be added later. Thirty seven elementary schools in low-income urban and rural areas throughout the United States, and one school in Mexico, participate. Long range goals for the programs include making it available to all U.S. schools wishing to participate and reaching 20,000 schools and more than 10 million students by the year 2000.

234 228 The Unfinished Journey AUTODESK The Autodesk Foundation, whose sole mission is to assist public schools in making the changes necessary to prepare students for the information age, was established with funding from the SEGA Foundation, the Institute for Informa- tion Age Education. The goal of the Institute is to provide training and education to educators so that they may more effectively and efficiently bring about change in their schools and classrooms. The Institute operates as a teacher training academy and focuses on developing a corp of expert teachers who can train other teachers on how to use and master technology so that they may in turn pass these skills on to their students. Emphasizing technological solutions, the Institute works to address the five critical training needs identified by schools selected as recipients of SB 1274 state funding: To prepare students for life and work in the 21st century, teachers need new training and education. To prepare students to work effectively in teams, teachers need help understanding the dynamics and skills of teamwork. To infuse technology into all aspects of learning, teachers need opportunities to be in an information age environment and to receive training in how to be an effective facilitator of learning in a technology rich environment. To teach students to be effective problem solvers, teachers need help developing strategies for implementing a thinking curriculum which emphasizes problem sol ring and critical thinking. To overcome the fragmentation of efforts in the state's restructuring effort, agencies, schools and districts need strategies for how to collaborate and leverage one another's investments in school reform. Of the various technology programs and initiatives, Autodesk is currently the only one focusing on the training of teachers.

APPLE The Apple Early Language Connections Program is a literature based, comprehensive early language arts package designed for a balanced reading, writing, listening and speaking curriculum. The package offers a multisensory approach to teaching through the integration of hardware, software, books and audio- tapes. The package is designed to be used with Apple Macintosh computers so that students learn in an engaging, interactive environment that gives them control over their own learning. By using the computers and package, children can learn in the ways that are most natural to their individual learning styles. The program rests it foundation on four principles of developing language skills in young people. The Apple Early Language Connections philsophy: Assumes that all children are gifted in their own ways, and acts upon that assumption Recognizes that learning is preceded by the desire to learn Bases language learning around verbal and nonverbal symbols, because minds thrive on both kinds of language Provides opportunities for knowledge to grow through both "compre- hending" and "composing" along four pathways of language learning - listening, reading, speaking and writing.

New Uses of Technology 229 BEST COPY AVAILABLE 235 There is a Spanish edition of the program designed for use in classrooms where Spanish language instruction in used. A short description of another Apple project, the Christopher Columbus Consortiem, appears in the opening to this chapter.

AB 1470 Assembly Bill 1470 authorized the Educational Technology Local Assistance Program (ETLAP) and provided for several different types of local assistance grants, including School Based Education Technology Grants (SBETGs). In approving the expanded ETLAP, the California Legislature concluded that educational technology is a valuable tool to improve and expand instruction to meet the evolving needs of California pupils. Technology offers benefits to all levels of education, and to students at all levels of ability and in all geographic regions. The legislature felt that elected representatives shou1,3 be involved in planning and establishing policy for the applications of educat anal technology. Further, it was the intent of the legislature that instructional technology uses and staff development should be developed, implemented, and evaluated at the school level with district, regional, state, and private sector support. And finally, the ETLAP should encourage sensitivity to the need for equity of access to educational technology for all pupils, while allowing for targeted uses of technology by grade, subject area, or for students with special needs. The major goals of the SBETG grants established under the legislation were to: improve the quality and effectiveness of instruction and learning through the use of technology. increase the use of coordinated school level planning for the utilization of technology. insure that school-level technology use is articulated withdistrict programs and planning. facilitate integration of technology into the school curriculum aligned with the state frameworks. increase the effective management of learning resources through access to and use of technology. evaluate the impact of technology on teaching, learning,planning and resource utilization. Under AB 1470 the following types of projects were funded: the planning and development of new applications of technology at school sites; the expansion of existing school site applications of educational technology; the adoption or adaptation of existing statewide educational technology programs or projects. In the first year of the program total funds available were 6 million dollars.

230 236 The Unfinished Journey ,

it 0 Restructuring is largely a school-site focused confronted that need, the role of private founda- movement. And yet, each school site con- tions, issues of system wide school financing and fronts the need for a larger system of sup- the critical need to support future generations of port that will enable its reforms. Also, a movement restructuring schools. that produces a select number of wonderful Finally, the section concludes with "Reflection restructured schools hardly speaks to the need to and Accountability." One of the greatest promises reform an entire public schooling system. This sec- of restructuring reform isits commitment to tion focuses upon system level concerns, and issues accountability for student outcomes. This account- of policy in restructuring. ability requires schools to become reflective com- Chapter 12, "Tools and Time," explores the munities, and to implement appropriate data, crucial role of an infrastructure of technical assis- information and assessment mechanisms that pro- tance and professional development supportand vide pictures of student achievement and participa- the need to strengthen and gear that infrastructure tion, and strong accountability systems that hold to assist schools in grappling with the challenges of schools both to addressing equity and quality. diversity and equity. It also presents the findings of What might such a system look like? What will it our research about the acute need to formally take to build it? These are the issues grappled with build time within the school day and year for the in Chapter 15. planning, collaboration and professional develop- Our research into these areas made it clear that ment required of restructuring. A profile of Valen- restructuring is not a quick fix. Creating a new cia Park Elementary School in San Diego offers a kind of schooling system requires a new system of glimpse of one school site whose restructuring was support and policies to adequately carry the vision. inspired by a national school reform model, Restructuring is not a reform with a finite end, not Comer's School Development Project. at a single school site nor on a system wide basis. "Towards Restructuring an Entire Public For restructuring to succeed and hold any hope of School System," Chapter 13, looks beyond indi- making schools more equitable and accessible to vidual school sites to issues of district level reform. diversestudents,itmust besupported by The role of unions and of central administration resources, the infrastructure and appropriate offices in facilitating restructuring is examined, accountability measures for the duration. and the possibilities and barriers to system wide "Change is not a place, it's a journeya equity are explored. This is followed by a profile long journey. It's a journey that is going of Linda Tubach, a union representative and to require a lot of learning and change teacher activist centrally involved in restructuring on the parts of people in the system. It at Franklin Senior High School in Los Angeles. Tubach discusses how union leadership and a takes a long time to internalize that kind teacher empowerment perspective fueled a strong of change. There are many schools movement for reform in her school and district. whose restructuring efforts I really The section continues with "The Role of Fund- respect, and it has taken them years and ing in the Restructuring Movement," Chapter 14. years to become what they are now, and Every restructuring school cited the crucial role of it's still an unfinished piece of work. It's special funding for the time, planning, activities a journey for the long haul." and professional development needed for restruc- Tom Ruiz, teacher, San Francisco turing. This chapter examines how schools have

232 239 CHAPTER 12'

THE TOOLS FOR CHANGE

Restructuring schools require a multitude of resources to learn about restructuring, to access information about school reform models, to link with other schools, and learn new instructional methods. It is clearly a challenge to both the schools and the infrastructure they rely onto be adequately supported and supportive in their efforts to improve education for all students. And of course, an ongoing dilemma is finding enough time to work on all the important components of restructuring, without working to the point of burn out. Restructuring schools garner these resourcessome direct funds and other types of services and supports as wellfrom a variety of sources. Schools turn to university personnel and projects, non-profit and corporate-sponsored school reform projects, independent consultants, county offices of education and many others, all for help in moving forward in restructuring.

Looking within and beyond one school Restructuring schools are building their own networks within and beyond their schools to access and spread information and experiences about models and new curriculum and pedagogies. These networks are both among faculty within a school, and extend out to other schools in a district and beyond. The excitement of faculty who have new ideas and feel supported in trying them was palpable in most of our case study schools. There was a wonderful sense of possibilities and innovation. The most common notion of change was that other faculty fibers would see the new approaches, become interested in them, and follow suit. It is a kind of demonstration project model of change within each school site. The intention is to begin with a core, share the expertise, ignite interest, and then expand beyond to whole school implementation. At Franklin High. School in Los Angeles, a small team of teachers who were involved in the Humanitas Project, nurtured and supported by Humanitas teachers in other schools in the city, initiated a team-taught, interdisciplinary, block scheduled humanities core. Other teachers in the school are now considering adopting the model. Faculty meetings become the formal means of sharing these innovations, but there are other means as wellteachers making presentations about their work during staff development days, administrators filling in for teachers so they can visit one another's classrooms. The sharing of ideas was one of the most positive aspects of restructuring that teachers talked about. This was especially true where there were formal mechanisms linking teachers for support, curriculum development and team teaching. Teachers also look outward for ideas. Visiting other schools in teams allowed teachers to reflect together on what they felt was appropriate for their school. At least half of the case study schools mentioned the importance of seeing other restructuring schools in action. Teachers from

240 233 The Unfinished Journey Calexico High, at the Mexican border, travelled as far as northern Cali- fornia to find models which serve students needs with a "two plus two" approach. Reading research together and discussing its relevance to their students is frequent. The Artesia High School restructuring committee created packets of reading material for each teacher. The teachers at Manchester Elementary School in Mendocino County spent the first year of restructuring meeting every Thursday afternoon to read research together. Says teacher Doug Day: "It was so empowering, we'd go away high as a kite thinking about what we could do. We read some powerful stuff. It was so exciting, talking about the ways education can be, not the way it is with student learning not reaching its potential. We didn't go away exhausted, even though is was Thursdays after school. 1 We'd go away from those reading sessions ecstatic."

The role of an outside lens: The Use of "Coaches" Many restructuring schools rely on coaches, facilitators, consultants and other people providing technical assistance in the change process. The majority of schools worked with some kind of outside consultant for short periods of time, on distinct aspects of restructuring. For example, many of the case study schools worked with coaches to learn better communication and organization building skills; a few schools turned to consultants for help with whole language approaches and other innovations in teaching. Fewer of the schools, ten out of the thirty-two, worked with long term coaches. These coaches offer an outside lens, substantial support and facilitation for a wide range of reform issues the school might be grappling with. Coaches come from a variety of sources- the non-profit sector, higher education and the business world. But not all the people who fulfilled the role of "coach" came from outside the school. In some schools a staff member filled some of the functions of coach. For instance, at a few schools, teachers had been hired explicitly to work with the other teachers to move them in a certain direction. At one school, the restructuring coordinator was highly skilled in listening and trust building, and since she was highly regarded by the entire community, was able to fulfill the role of facilitating team building and inclusion. Every school which had worked with a coach and had positive experiences to share, remarked about the crucial role these people had played in providing support, affirmation and validation. One person at a restructured high school talked about how their coach from the Coali- tion of Essential Schools helped them to know that it was normal for the staff to have conflict, experience hard feelings and require some time to work through difficult issues. Another essential function was the coach's outside perspectivea sense of overview of the whole school and the ability to view the change dynamics as a non-invested part of the school culture. People who fulfilled this role well were able to guide school members through a process of thinking through and analyzing the issues at their school siteallowing detailed focus on certain issues without losing an understanding of the whole school. Such coaches can be termed "critical friend" or "friendly outsider". A coach's expertise becomes crucial at this point. Based on their specific knowledge and agenda, the

The Tools for Change 234 241 AA expertise a coach brings to a school often is a major influence on the school's understanding of problems and their approach to school change. The state reform initiatives are having a State Offered Supports The state reform initiatives are having a major impact on the field of major impact on the restructuringparticularly SB 1274 (Demonstration of School Restruc- turing), SB 1882 (Professional Development), and SB620 (Healthy Start field of restructuring. Initiative). Both as funding mechanisms, and with their accompanying technical assistance, these initiatives have been central to spurring Both as funding reform. The California Center for School Restructuring's technical assistance to SB 1274 schools, above and beyond just help in writing propos- mechanisms, and als, has been crucial in helping schools to progress. SB 620, the Healthy Start Initiative, has granted 182 planning grants and 65 operational with their grants totalling $32 million. In both cases, however, the desire for schools to participate far exceeded the ability of the initiatives to fund accompanying and support reform. The three major California grade-level reform documentsIt's Ele- technical assistance, mentary, Caught in the Middle, and Second to Noneand the state curriculum frameworks have also ignited new dialogue in the field and laid these initiatives have foundation for both structural and curricular changes. Notably, the major impact has been upon middle schools. Caught in the Middle has been central to been a major force for middle school reform in restructuring schools. Every middle school in this study not only referred to Caught in the Mid- spurring reform. dle, but had designed at least one of their restructuring priorities in line with the document. Y9 California also funds a professional development infrastructure of subject matter projects. county offices of education, and the California School Leadership Academy. Relatively few of our studied schools mentioned these resources directly in describing the professional development and technical assistance networks they have used in their restructuring effort. However, some examples were offered as to how county education offices' promotion of restructuring and reform efforts have been important. The Los Angeles County Office of Education began seven years ago to create the County Case Studies Project school network. This network involves nine elementary schools in Los Angeles County which are implementing a modified Eastman Project bilingual model using the whole language approach to instruction. The initial thrust was to focus upon curriculum and instruction, and the creation of school-wide comprehensive efforts to provide effective language services for LEP students. This is a research based effort, and involves Dr. Estevan Diaz and Dr. Barbara Flores, whole language specialists from California State University at San Bernardino. The staff of the case study schools have spent the past five years training in literacy development and second language learning through study groups in the summer, summer leadership

242 235 The Unfinished Journey institutes, and professional development opportunities throughout the school year. These have been supported by grade level release days provided by the districts. The County Office support personnel, Chuck Acosta and Shelley Spiegel-Coleman, meet monthly with the case study sites and provide continuous support and technical assistance. Two sites in our research, Mark Keppel and Fourth Street Elementary Schools, are part of this network of schools, and have demonstrated how such support has facilitated far more progress in creating comprehensive bilingual schools than almost anywhere else in the state. ExaMples such as these are still too rare, however. If California is serious about supporting reform in the public school system, a stronger infrastructure for whole school change will be necessary.

Key Partners: Non-Profits, Universities and Community Coalitions The university and non-profit sector's research and resources have been extremely important to restructuring schools. The ideas of Comer's School Development Project, of Sizer's Coalition for Essential Schools, of Gardner's Multiple Intelligence theories, of Levin's Accelerated Schools, etc., are widely known and implemented, adapted or used to help schools reflect upon their own visions. And, the coaches, training sessions, and materials from these restructuring models are tremendously useful to restructuring schools. Schools in our sample were involved with a variety of national reform model networks. One example of the kind of support schools receive through affiliation with various national reform models, is the story of Valencia Park Elementary School (see the Profile which follows this chapter). In 1988, several staff members of the school heard James Comer, professor of psychiatry at Yale University, speak about his systems approach to school management. Said Barbara Beckstrand, a Valencia Park resource teacher: "The excitement of the staff made it obvious to me that this is exactly what we needed at Valencia Park. Dr. Corner's presentation highlighted solutions to site problems that we encounter daily in our school. His presentation gave me a personal lift. It became a goal of mine to learn more about this model and to focus on the nurturing of students, parents and teachers rather than focusing on weaknesses or deficits." The Corner model creates formats in which administrators, teachers, paraprofessionals and parents share in responsibility for the school. The model utilizes the mental health principles of child development and the talents of parents and school staff as collaborative decision makers. Diana Shipley when appointed the new Principal, traveled to Connecti- cut to be trained by Comer and his staff at the Yale Child Study Center. Staff and parent training have been a vital part of the continuing efforts to implement the model at Valencia Park; the school remains an active part of a network of Comer schools. Similarly, Rancho Milpitas Middle School in Milpitas is one of approximately 300 Accelerated Schools affiliated with the National Cen- ter of the Accelerated Schools Project at Stanford University. Accelerated Schools adhere to three interrelated principles which are largely absent from traditional schools which serve "at risk" students: creating a unity

The Tools for Change 236 243 of purpose among parents, teachers, support staff, students, administrators, the district acid the local community to work towards a common set of goals; participating in a shared decision making process; and identifying and building upon the strengths of the entire school community. The philosophy is basically that instead of slowing down the curriculum for "low achieving" students, schools need to accelerate student learning by creating enriching, lively, student involved schools. Seventy-five percent of the Rancho Milpitas staff had to agree to this philosophy and process to become an Accelerated School. The Stanford team provided a one- week summer training institute to orient the staff, and involved them in assessing their school. A coach from the project continues to work with the schoolattending meetings, available to provide insight, research or technical assistance as needed by the school as it pursues its restructuring process. Felton Elementary School works with just a single professor, Dr. Claude Goldenberg, as a consultant on student learning. Goldenberg is a professor at University of California at Los Angeles, and is affiliated with the National Research Center on Cultural Diversity and Second Lan- guage Learning in Santa Cruz. The Principal, Jessie Sawyer, was deeply concerned about the underachievement of her students. An SB 1274 grant, and a Spencer Foundation grant enabled the school to work directly with Dr. Goldenberg, meeting weekly to discuss theories of learning and teaching, to problem solve and assess the reform effort. The Los Angeles Educational Partnership provides coaches to site based management schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. These coaches come from the business and corporate world with expertise in organizational change and planning. While they seldom have an educational background, they apply their generic understanding of change to facilitating restructuring in schools. Local networks established by non-profits concerned with school reform have also been important. One illustration is provided by Paul Revere Elementary School in San Francisco, one of the schools involved in the Collaboration for Educational Excellence (CEE) that was formed to assist a network of schools in undertaking school reform "from within". The Collaboration's partners included Public Advocates, San Francis- co State University and the Achievement Councilworking in conjunc- tion with schools in the San Francisco Unified School District. The CEE first made contact with the schools through a Leadership Institute where teams from each school participated. CEE staff then worked at Revere for almost a year getting to know the staff, building an understanding of the school, and focusing on team-building and conflict resolution among the faculty. Bev Jimenez, an Achievement Council staff member, and Steve Phillips, a Public Advocates lawyer, played the major roles of diagnosti- cian, conflict mediator, meeting facilitator, and general friend to the school. As one teacher explained: "Bev looks tc us for the questions and she helps us find our own answers". Over the course of a few years, by modeling and explicit training, CEE had turned these roles over to faculty members who were able to proceed with their restructuring with new skills and a stronger consensus about the school's vision.

244 237 The Unfinished Journey Infrastructure Needs New Expertise Most of the restructuring models, coaches, and reform literature is The dialogue on which generic in reference to a student population. The commitment to "all children" is thought to suffice as an approach to reforming teaching and restructuring rests, overall schooling practices. Though the rallying cry of "all students" is important and worthy of praise, it mistakenly glances over students' spe- the joint planning, cific needs. Most of the coaches and associated projects/models we observed demonstrated little or no expertise in the area of effective learn- collaborative ing and teaching for language and cultural minority students. Coaches without the focus or expertise on issues of diversity and equity are not development of a able to encourage such a focus at the school site or to provide the essential research or knowledge base. Coaches with little training or expertise vision, professional about diversity are equally unable to facilitate the crucial dialogue about race, culture and language that is absent at so many schools. development and

Looking for Time reflection that fuel The resources necessary for change include not only knowledge and school reform are expertise, but sheer time and energy. The dialogue on which restructuring rests, the joint planning, collaborative development of a vision, pro- dependent upon a fessional development and reflection that fuel school reform are dependent upon a school community having time together. Almost no school community discussion of restructuring occurs without some reference to how this valuable resource is bought, garnered, negotiated or stolen from other having time together. activities. "Comp Ed funds gave us a resource period a daywe couldn't If make changes without that. You can't ask a teacher with a full load to implement new forms of teaching. You just can't. It's like trying to change the engine on an airplane while it's in mid- flight. Now we finally have collaboration time! Two wonderful hours a week for meeting in teams."Suzanne Torres, teacher, Overfelt High Currently reform is now being sustained primarily by caring educators who are giving literally thousands of hours of voluntary time. It is very unclear whether and how this can be sustained, and perhaps more importantly whether it should be. A participant in one of California Tomorrow's retreats to review the preliminary finding of this report declared: "We've been in this process for about six years now. I think it's become too clear to us that this is a never ending process, and that every time we think we're done with something, we have to revisit it. All of this takes time, and that cannot be sustained on voluntary time forever. Our own energy is necessary, it's vital, but it can't be sustained on this level. Every one on our staff donates hours and hours of extra time every week, just giving the time to the school. We believe in what we're doing, and it's the only way to get things done that we care about. But it leads to burnout. We just can't continue forever doing this." One school, still early in its consideration of whether or not to restructure described the first faculty meeting where the issue was raised.

The Tools for Change 238 245 AA One person suggested they add a few minutes to each school day to create a minimum day once a month to use for planning and meeting. The reality is that the Immediately, several people responded angrily, "Isn't this still asking us to volunteer our time?" Unable to figure out how to arrange the time schools that are without depending on teachers to volunteer extra hours, they ended up letting the whole idea drop. It was six months before the subject was charging forward with raised again. More than half of our schools discussed the inability, lack of their reforms have both resources or unwillingness to create the needed time as a major liability. found ways to buy "Our school hasn't really given us time to prepare for the changes we're supposed to make. At least once a month we need time, and are highly some time to plan together if we are going to do block scheduling and interdisciplinary teaching! We asked for time, but we didn't reliant on teachers get it. We wanted more time to meet together as a team to establish what we would do together as a team, what it meant to be a to donate even more team, and also to meet with other teams. But we didn't get the time! So it's no wonder that things aren't working out well." time beyond that. The reality is that the schools that are charging forward with their reforms have both found ways to buy time, and are highly reliant on Restructuring is, as teachers to donate even more time beyond that. Restructuring is, as more than one teacher pointed out, "happening off the backs of teachers". To more than one teacher some degree, at least for a while, much of this is happily given by teachers who view restructuring as a means of making their voices heard, their pointed out, work more effective and truly making a difference. Many teachers spoke of this trade-offwishing they could be compensated for the many extra 'happening off the hours they put in, wishing they could be structurally freed to have time to devote to restructuring, but also so very excited by the potential of backs of teachers'. restructuring that they accept the condition of overwork and voluntarism. Success is dependent upon building up a culture of involvement among the teachers and parents, and of recruiting and hiring teachers who are willing and able to give the "extra miles". Loretta Spears, counselor at Horace Mann Middle School in San Francisco described her interview for the job. She was interviewed by two teachers, a student, a paraprofessional, parent and the head counselor. At one point, she was asked if she was willing to work late hours: "At Horace Mann it's a cultural thing. You just go the extra mile. It's expectedit's engrained. So it's very hard work. It feels like fair play, though, because everyone does it. You don't want to be the one working seven hour days when everyone else works ten. This school has a reputation as being for teachers and counselors that want to work towards changework hard towards change. Everyone in the district knows it. You apply to work here knowing that. And we do work hard, and it shows in what we accomplish. It's like being in heaven, except you miss lunch alot." Sue Verne, a teacher and division leader at Florin High School echoed the sentiment:

246 The Unfinished Journey "Florin isn't for everyone. There are huge numbers of unpaid extra hours that we all put in. People come here to teach knowing it will involve so much more. And they do give it. But they get something back, too. Everyone is more approachable now as a result of governance changes and the committee structure. The staff feels empowered; it's a more open school. Everyone has a sense of the right to ask for information, to walk into each other's classes, to give input, to ask for help. It's an open atmosphere. And we earn that by putting in the time working together." Of course time is not just needed for planning and meeting. Trying new pedagogies, developing new curriculum, implementing new programs requires preparation. A woman working at the district level described how hard the faculty at O'Farrell Middle School work: "I really worry they're wearing themselves out. One day I had to drop something off really earlyat 6:30 in the morning and there were a lot of cars in the lot already. 1 drove by again in the evening and there were still a lot of cars there. Some teachers are here from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. They're exhausted, but they believe in what they are doing!" Lori, a guidance counselor at Artesia High School said: "It's never dull, and it's never easy, and it's never within the hours of your job description or contract. There is a huge amount of extra work, but people volunteer all the time. A large core of people, not just a few. We are committed to providing that time. Nothing will happen if we can't get together to plan, to talk. So we rearrange the schedule. Late days twice a month, reallocate a few minutes here and there. We have four student free days provided by the state and we make them highly planned days to get the most out of them." Some schools have developed the overall trust and "buy in" so leadership can be rotated, with new people taking on roles an original core once carried. A teacher at Virginia Rocca Barton explained: "At one point we realized that nobody wasn't on a committee. That was great, but it also became exhausting. Leadership is now taking turns. It used to he just veteran teachers as the leadership. Now they're stepping back. We're all focused on the same goals, so it works." Faculty energy is sustained by learning to pace things. At Frank Paul School, the first year was, in the words of Ole Principal, a "burn out" year. "We got burned out by Christmas vacation. This faculty went full blast to try to change the whole system. We had to slow it down. We had too many meetings, so we cut down on them. We cut down on activities. We had to learn to slow down or it would have burned us all out." Motivation and energy are also sustained by seeing the results of the labor. A home economics instructor at Artesia High School has put many extra hours into researching, proposing and designing a new career pathways model for the school. She puts it this way: The Tools for Change 24n 247 "I am tired. I have put in so many hours. It would be great if we got compensated for our time or at least paid our regular hours at a higher salary rate. But the fact is, the public just isn't willing to pay it. The thing is, we're excited! The public sure gets its moneys worth out of us. But our motivation is having the chance to make changes, and do things that count, and try new ways. It's just as true for us as it is for our studentsrelevance is a wonderful motivator!" Her colleague chimed in, "The kind of stress is different now. We work harder than ever, but the stress is caused by the work itself, by concerns about kidsnot by the relationships between faculty or the frustration of being isolated or being stopped from doing what you feel you need to do for kids. And that makes a world of difference. Yes, we're tired and overworked and stressed. But it feels like honest exhaustion that arises from what you want to and need to do." While some schools have been able to find some mechanisms to reimburse teachers for time worked and thus to "buy" extra time for restructuring, the overall pattern is one of massive voluntarism on the parts of teachers. This is okay with some, and not with others. There was definitely some discomfort expressed about whether restructuring school faculties are "co-dependents" in overwork, who look the other way at things that unions have fought to change for years with regards to working conditions. In many schools, there are mumblings about waiting for someone to complain to the union and grieve the number of hours, or the new roles. Principals, too, see the problem: "It seems to me that the restructuring effort is doomed to burning itself out just because it's so unrealistic. The real restructuring will have to take place statewide, where a level playing field can be created. We all know there needs to be smaller class sizes. We all know there needs to be time for planning. Those kinds of elements have to be built in so school sites can get focused on the instructional program, rather than expending huge amounts of time and energy trying to write grants. It's absurd. Some of the schools that are really cooking and moving forward, the people there are fanat- ics. It's not realistic. People want to get into the field of education, be good decent educators and have a life outside as well. This can't continue to be fueled off the backs of teachers who work 60 hour weeks and pour all their energies into the school. I know that's a romantic notion about the dedicated teacher, but it just can't be sustained. It's not fair to teachers, and frankly, it's not sustainable, because it's so unrealistic. People just can't keep that up year after year."Michael Jones, Principal, Alianza Elementary

248 241 The Unfinished Journey It is not realistic to base the hope of public school reform upon the capacity of individual teachers and educators to volunteer many extra hours beyond what is already a full time job. It will eventually require a public finance system that pays for the hours that restructuring and quality schooling demand, and supports flexibility at the school site level to rearrange the school calendar to accommodate time for planning, professional development, reflection and curriculum development. And yet, the cue that must be taken from the willingness of educators to devote their time in the short run is that something exciting, something important, some real changes are possible. The very fact of the high levels of excitement, dedication and commitment to this change process, despite the heavy toll it takes on individuals, speaks to the enormous potential for positive change.

Mechanisms For Creating Time:

O'Farrell Middle School has cluster substitutes who go to the site every day to help with classes when teachers are absent or need to be in meetings. These cluster subs are assigned to each "family," and are available to free up a teacher if s/he needs to talk to another teacher, observe another class, etc. This cluster sub concept is funded through SB 1274 and Panasonic Foundation funds. Several other schools have also created a pool of regular "cluster subs" to allow teachers to spend time out of the classroom. Horace Mann Middle School provides every teacher with two hours of collaboration time with their "family" team twice a week, plus an additional individual prep period once a day. During this time students are in schoolwide electives, freeing the core staff to have their meetings. All four district-provided staff development days are used to work in extended "family's teams developing curr iculum together. In addition, the school is able to provide ten hours of extended pay time per teacher, and ten hours of substitute time per teacher to put into curriculum development. Paraprofessionals are paid for their time to attend staff development days, in order to facilitate their participation. This is all paid for out of corn bined School Improvement Program, State Compensatory Education, categorical and Consent Decree Desegregation funds. Oceana High School went to block schedulingthree 95 minute classes a dayas a central component of its restructuring. This has resulted in longer classes and less passing time for students. There is also a shortened schedule on Wednesday, where staff meet from12:45 until the end of the day. Many students work on fulfilling their communityservice requirements during Wednesday afternoons. However, the school did have to get a waiver on instructional minutes from the state. The first year teachers worked without pay over the summer. Since then, they have= been able to garner grant money (1274 and,1882) to pay stipends. Artesia High School has used adult school funds to buy time. There are 32 adult education classes on campus for students that free Artesia teachers to have collaboration and planning time. A few schools took their eight School Improvement Project student free days and divided them into equal parts to create extra weekly planning time. Many elementary schools have accrued pupil free days by adding ten, minutes each other day of the school year, or "banking" time in other ways. Several schools have received private foundation grants to enable them to have whole school retreats some time during the school year.

The Tools for Change 242 iES1 oPY fiVAILABLE 249 I II

Valencia Park: A Comer School

Introduction Valencia Park Center for Academics, Drama and Dance in San Diego, California, is a Corner school, based on the national model for school change developed by Yale Child Study Center psychiatrist Dr. James Comer. Corner's School Development Project (SDP) approaches school improvement from the perspective that problems in low-income minority schools result from a profound discontinuity between students' experiences at home and at school. To reconcile these gaps, the SDP is built around three elements: a school governance team which includes parents, teachers, administrators, and support staff; a mental health team; and broad parental participation. The large forty-year old, K-5 Valencia Park is located in the center of a middle to low income neighborhood and serves 1,100 students. Of these, 45% are African-American, 19% Hispanic, 14% Filipino, 11% White, 6% Laotian, 2% Pacific Islander, and 1% other Asian. In the late eighties when enrollment started to increase, the district placed the school on a multi-track year round schedule. Now students, teachers and aides are divided into four tracks with a 45 days on and 15 days off schedule. The administrators, office support and custodial staff work a twelve month year. Although the school is quite large, there is a warm and friendly atmosphere that permeates the campus. Inside classrooms children work intently, their faces bright and smiling. The adults on campus move about their work in an energized manner that suggests they are excited about the things occurring at the school. At recess and lunch, laughter aboundsnot just among the students, but the whole school community. Especially remarkable is the constant encouragement, support and nurturing of students at the school. It is the Comer way. Over the years, the Corner model of school change has demonstrated that increases in student achievement, particularly at schools that serve poor communities and children of color, can be linked to raised levels of self esteem in children and increased parental or caregiver participation. Comer argues that many of the reform efforts are generally engineered by people in mainstream society and reflect an assumption that students will arrive at school from the mainstream. Many poor minority students do not succeed in schools because of a conflict between the value messages they receive at home and those they receive at school. As such, these students may not have learned the social norms expected at school. According to Comer's literature, the SDP approach is to: "Promote psychological development in students, which encourages bonding to the school. Doing so requires fostering positive interaction between parents and school staff."

243

250 The Unfinished Journey At Valencia Park, the governance team is a shared decision making body. This planning and leadership group oversees school-wide issues and implementation of the goals of their comprehensive school plan. The mental health team, called the Student Support Team (SST), oversees the childdevelopment needsof students through focus on individual students and also the identification of larger school issues which relate to the students. Parent involvement is critical in the development 31 of a total school community. All staff members place a strong emphasis on wel- coming parents and providing many opportunities for them to become involved A meeting of the mental health team at the school according to their level of comfort.

History The story of how Valencia Park became a Corner school is full of vision, tried and true educational ideas, and desire to connect with the local community from which the school was alienated at that time. The California Tomorrow staff talked with some of the faculty about the origins of the project: "George Frey, Assistant Superintendent at the time, was very well read, he had a better vision than any of us. He'd read and heard about Comer; he was impressed with Comer's results in raising test scores- the outcomes. Plus he was a real community man- he liked the emphasis on bringing the community in. Although our school was in the community, there was a sense of alienation from the community. We needed to make ourselves more accessible and to train parents to get more involved in our school. We needed to ask ourselves 'why is coming into the school intimidating for our parents?"Rosalind Jackson, Resource Teacher

"This isn't anything new. I was a counselor years ago in Illinois and we had a similar program. Teachers were empowered, we worked with parents, we thought about the whole child. So it was easy for me to buy into. The district was looking for a principal with ties to the community who could implement the Comer model. My kids went to the high school nearby so I know a lot of people in this community. Some of the parents I know here graduated from high school with my children."Diana Shipley, Principal It became important for Valencia Park to move forward with Comer because in prior years there had been high teacher turnover (10-15 per year) and poor communication between parents and teachers. Moreover, student discipline was a problem. The school lacked and needed stability. Recognizing that the SDP uses the talents of parents, teachers, administrators and mental health experts in a collaborative fashion to benefit children, it was felt this kind of cohesion could help stabilize the school.

School Profile: Valencia Park Elementary School 251 School Planning and Management Team One of the first components created at the school was the School Planning and Management Team (SPMT). The SPMT meets every other Monday to address the school climate, social and academic programs for students, parent issues, staff development and training. The team has the power to make decisions through consensus. Rosalind Jackson talked about the SPMT and the benefits, and sometimes drawbacks, of shared decision making. "Shared decision making isn't easy. With consensus you have to talk to each other, that's the only way. And you can't solve everything between three and six o'clock and then be done with it. It's not that tidy. It takes time and talking, but we think more globally now about the kids and about the school. We depend on and encourage everyone to pitch in, parents, other teachers. Our expectations for kids have changed. We're more like advocates now, really looking out for children in a holistic way." Other teachers also commented on the positive effect the SPMT had in shaping the school wide vision of children and in pulling together the various factions that comprise the school community. Lona Davies, a fourth grade teacher says she has seen a great deal of change in this regard: "In the thirteen years I have taught at Valencia Park, I have seen a dramatic change in the attitudes of students, teachers, parents, and community. This is due in part to the Comer model and the SPMT. As a member of the SPMT I find it exciting to work with dedicated staff, parents, and community to make the decisions that bring the home and school together. We can be innovative and creative in providing a beneficial educational environment for the children at Valencia Park. The SPMT offers the opportunity for shared decision making and 'buy-in' to the educational process. To me, the SPMT is becoming a cohesive group that works together to better the education of the children at Valencia Park. We are empowered to make the decisions that make a difference to kids." The SPMT has been instrumental in supporting teachers at the school. The team runs the staff development at Valencia Park and according to Bowers, a second grade teacher, the administration is very supportive and encourages teachers to find ways to improve their teaching skills. "We can attend conferences if we want to, they support us in this and encourage us to do it. The administration is very supportive of teachers and their professional growth. We have staff development every other month and we also have regular meetings where we discuss a variety of things that concern us as professionals." Virginia Griffith, another second grade teacher, feels the best thing about the SPMT in terms of teacher empowerment is that teachers' ideas and concerns are considered:

252 245 The Unfinished Journey "Since we are the ones in the classroom and with the children most of the time, we should have an avenue to give input to the administration. Since this avenue has been provided by the It gives me a good SPMT, the teaching staff has become more involved in all aspects of the school and works diligently to create a loving and caring feeling when I invite climate for the children." the parents to the To inform the school's vision and activities, Valencia Park educates the entire school community to be aware of the strengths and implica- meeting to find out tions of diversity. Diana Shipley says: "We have to get to know all the cultures. The Laotian culture is that they are just as different from the Vietnamese; the Hispanic and African Ameri- can cultures are totally different. Corner says it's not easy in a concerned as the school that's, so heterogeneous, especially when you have all the different languages of the students and families, and he's right." school staff may be regarding their Mental Health Team/SST children. This team Whereas the SPMT promotes a cohesive school community, one of the most exciting aspects of the Comer model, according to staff, is the meeting is a truly school's mental health team, the Student Study Team (SST). This is composed of administrators, resource specialists, a district counselor, school collaborative effort nurse and a clinical psychologist from the University of California at San Diego. The team meets every Tuesday morning. The SST works to pre- among school staff vent potential problems from developing into crises and also intervenes in specific cases referred by teachers and parents. John Buffington, the and parents. district counselor who co-chairs the team with Diana Shipley, feels the SST is the most challenging and rewarding team at the school: Valencia Park Counselor "It gives me a good feeling when I invite the parents to the meeting to find out that they are just as concerned as the school staff 99 may be regarding their children. This meeting offers positive support and successful interventions that can be implemented in the home for the parents, as well as in the classroom for teachers. As I look into the eyes of the parents, I can see how appreciative they are of our efforts. This team meeting is a truly collaborative effort among school staff and parents." Rosalind Jackson sees the support offered by the SST to the children and their families as crucial and filling a vital need. "The SST is our safety net and the central part of the model. It monitors kids very carefully. If our stats reflect a number of foster children among our students, we set up a support group. If we notice a group of girls lacking in social skills we set up a social skills club. If we notice grandparents are the primary support of a lot of the kids, we set up a support group for them. We have lots of programs to address our varied needs." One parent whose child was referred through the SST process talked about the mental health team approach:

School Profile: Valencia Park Elementary School 246 253 "If a kid is having a problem, behavior or academic, the team is available. The principal, the counselor, the psychologist, the teacher, they put their heads together and try to figure out how to best serve that child. For me and my son it was a good process. They involved me in the decision making process. They said a lot of positive things about him, it wasn't all negative." All students that have been served by the SST are followed up after six weeks to determine if further intervention is needed. According to the team, the process doesn't solve all the problems and some teachers become frustrated at times. But most teachers feel supportedwhen they've exhausted their possibilities, the team is there to try to help.

Parent / Community Connection and Embeddedness The parent participation component of the SDP was probably the hardest of the three Comer elements to implement at Valencia Park. Shipley noted that providing a climate where staff and parents feel comfortable with each other, trust each other, and depend on each is not easy. Attitudes had to change on both sides. "We first changed a lounge into a parent room where family members do volunteer work, register students, or meet when on campus. Next my vice principal and I would, and still do, stand out on campus in the morning, at lunch time, and after school and literally pull parents into the school. We first hired them for noon duty aides, then as classroom aides. The teachers received inservice training on how to reach parents. I will not allow parents, however, to come in and be irate and ugly. I am open to them and they are an important part of our school community, but I demand they show respect... to me, our teachers and the school." The results of this focus on parent participation are felt throughout the school. Parents have been especially appreciative of the school's attempts to involve them. Kaylena Starker, known as "Auntie Kay" around the school because she has no children there but helps with the children of other parents, says the school is open and accessible to parents: "The school encourages participation. We've come down for cer- emonies, award presentations. It's helped because parents feel proud of their kids and come to the awards assemblies. The school is real open, too. Whenever I've come to help out, they've always welcomed me." One parent talked about all the effort put out by her daughter's teacher: "He even came to my house for a conference. I couldn't get to I school so he came to me... I appreciated it." Teachers are encouraged by the amount of parent presence on campus. They report having more contact with parents and that parents are more informed than in the past on how things are going at the school. Fourth grade teacher John Davidson continued:

254 247 The Unfinished Journey "Bringing in Corner has positive effects on parents, it promotes involvement. We've had picnics and potlucks, support programs and other activities to increase involvement. Also, the SPMT gives parents the pulse of the school and lets them know what's up with the school." Diana Shiley described how the dynamic of more parent interaction has both pleased and challenged the staff: "Teachers do feel more comfortable talking to parentsthey know parents are integral to the school, they see parents around them, around the school. The parents are becoming increasingly more assertivewe have leadership training so they can go into a class and ask the teacher for what they need. We're still working with the teachers that sometimes have a hard time with the level of parent influence and involvement. It's also a matter of how we as administrators role model working with parents." The leadership of Valencia Park understands that it takes more than planning parent involvement activities to build a strong sense of parent and community embedd iness. It's also their own connection to the local community that is essential to parents feeling comfortable participating with the school. "The leadership in any Comer zchool has to be someone who knows the community, believes in the community, can get in the community. I live in this community, so parents know methey see me at the grocery store and the hairdresser. I don't know how much race has to do with it, it's valimmtrr' the tie to the community more than race.I understand the culture of the parents and the community, and they know it. It has to do with people's comfort level with you and your understanding of them."Diana Shipley, Principal

Social and Emotional Development Valencia Park is committed, as part of the SDP, to a program that teaches students social skills of the classroom. This program also takes children on field trips to foster community interaction where they can use their new learned skills and understand their relevance in everyday life. An important part of this program includes the "daily affirmations." These are positive statements that give students a sense of agency. Through affirmations, students and staff are encouraged to accept responsibility, to understand power and influence, and to believe in their own freedom to hope, to choose, and to change. .") Affirmation statements include, for example:

2 4 8 School Profile: Valencia Park Elementary School 255 I AM AN IMPORTANT PERSON IN THIS WORLD I CAN TAKE A RISK IT MAY BE DIFFICULT BUT IT IS POSSIBLE The school posts an "affirmation of the month" for all to see, and this is recited during morning announcements. Linda Lungren, a magnet resource teacher has also written and recorded songs based on the affirmations. These are sung after the pledge of allegiance to help children internalize the qualities of esteem and self assurance. Says Lungren: "We want education to make our children productive citizens. We try to do so by providing a safe, healthy environment. Our affirmation statements are important to this. We have taken them from a variety of sources. Anytime a teacher can relate actions in class to an affirmation, we try to do so." There are indicators that the Comer approach is changing things at Valencia Park. Shipley reported that student absences and suspensions are down from past years. There is very little teacher turnover, improvement in staff communication and mutual respect among staff members. Moreover, many people at Valencia Park report how the Comer model is changing the school. Fourth grade teacher Rick Stewart has seen change come about at Valencia Park due to Corner: "There's been a change in the four years since I've been here. The climate is more positive among staff, students. The students are definitely more positive. Social skills for our students were definitely needed. I see things more in place now than before. We seem to be of one accord. The Corner model helped us to focus." Instructional aides too have seen the difference Comer has made in students and in staff at the school. "It works. From the time I've been here to now, there's been considerable difference and turnaround. Staff morale has improved. Comer helps the students, it builds self-esteem."

"It's helped the children because staff had to change. The children have seen the difference in staff and they want to succeed."

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256 The Unfinished Journey CHAPTER 13

TOWARDS RESTRUCTURING AN ENTIRE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM

Whether by design or default, restructuring schools are causing some level of restructuring in central district administrations, as well as shifts in the role of unions. District offices are pressured to switch from playing a program implementation and compliance role to a service and enabling rolefrom prescriptive to supportive of the change process that is designed at school sites. Unions are caught between the traditional role of protecting their membership against the long voluntary hours demanded by restructuring, and pressure to support the desires of their membership to restructure their schools. This renegotiation of roles is causing confusion and tension in an age of restructuring reforms. Much of this reflects an overall policy cloud about the vision of a central administration, about the role of district wide planning, and about where power should reside. How much autonomy should school sites be given? Who has the right to determine what schools can do? What is the mechanism by which individual school sites can be held accountable for meeting the needs of all students? Our concerns, however, are not just with district dynamics and politics, but with the big question of how to create policy and supports that will result in system wide change. It appeared that the existing process of individual school site restructuring will not achieve overall system change, but only a small number of wonderful schools. While in some parts of the nation restructuring is viewed as fundamentally a district wide issue (Rochester, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.), in California the role of the district has been relHvely overlooked in the restructuring movement. The California Business Roundtable's Restruc- turing California Education: A Design for Public Education in the 21st Century only refers to districts in terms of recommending changes in discretionary budget funding and authority. Here, the state would provide discretionary budgets directly to schools, while districts would enforce accountability. Of the more recent grade level reform reports, only Second to None acknowledges, in a short paragraph, new roles for the district office: "The district office undergoes a philosophical change in its role and approach. Its primary function is one of assistance and facilitation, not monitoring. The district office strives for a service orientation toward schools and creativeness to make change happen." The emphasis instead has been primarily on state level policy and school site activity. The SB 1274 legislation does cite the district as a unit of change and support in its relationship to the specific demonstration schools, helping to foster school site accountability and decision making. To do this districts are called upon to specify achievement outcomes in core competencies, to work with those local schools receiving SB 1274 funds to reach an agreed upon definition of educational equity, and to set

258 250 The Unfinished Journey goals for achieving quality educational programs. They are expected to provide schools with the flexibility to meet those goals, with substantial technical assistance and support. Thus, while the role of the district was defined and recognized by the legislation, the reach and intent was only in regards to the district office relationship to the few schools involved in the SB1274 demonstration. The legislation did not focus upon the restructuring of the district office or on a district-wide restructuring process or model. It is not surprising then, that unlike other parts of the nation, in California only a few districts have system wide restructuring plans. These are either districts with visionary Superintendents who have placed restructuring on the agenda, where the union has fought for restructuring in contract bargaining, or where a city wide coalition of community groups has forced a district wide emphasis. Thus, the policy dialogue about what a restructured district might look like has yet to really emerge in California. Instead, new roles are evolving through the daily process of negotiation between school sites and central district administrators, between teachers in restructuring schools and their unions. There is little overall vision, leadership or policy guiding this renegotiation process.

Central District Relations with Restructuring Schools We found relationships between central district offices and school sites to be difficult in this era of re-negotiating where the authority to design and implement programs really resides. This tension apparently grows as schools develop stronger visions of the changes they wish to make that depart from traditional practice. There is a palpable atmosphere in many of the schools of "anti-sta- tism"of hostility towards intervention from above. Change appears to lie in "throwing off the shackles" of the bureaucracy and of the district. This mood extends to resistance to district employees who perceive their jobs as running programs or ensuring compliance on issues such as bilingual education. In fewer schools we heard acclaim for the supportive role unions or district administrators were playing in creating a district-wide infrastructure for restructuring. Areas that were mentioned again and again as crucial were: providing staff development and grant writing support, allowing freedom for the school site to develop its own vision and hire its own staff, ceding budget authority to the school site, bilingual program support, allowing the school to develop its own achievement measures, protecting the stability of the school while undergoing restructuring, assist- ing in the seeking of waivers from the state, and finally, providing funding and overall encouragement. 251 Towards Restructuring an Entire Public School System 259 "We have very strong district support. They interact with teachers by coming on campus and listening to problems. They're also supportive financiallyif there's money available, they give it, and they're always looking for grants to improve and bolster programs."Staff member, De Anza Junior High, Calexico Unified But in other schools, in other districts, we heard volumes ranging from the effects of fiscal cuts, refused waivers, ideological roadblocks, increased class ratios, hiring restrictions and site-authority limitations. We heard about what appeared to be sudden and unilateral decisions on the part of the district to switch principals and staff, the top down impo- sition of specific restructuring models, refusal to approve new courses, magnet policies that result in inequitable distribution of resources within a district, and politics that pit one school against another. There was enormous frustration voiced over what felt like unnecessary red tape and sabotage of school based changed efforts. The schools point fingers at the district office; the district office points to the state or the teachers' union. When looking at the conditions that enable restructuring to move forward, it appeared clear that a determined faculty can manage to continue even with little or no support, but they will not and cannot continue when actively undermined. Said one teacher in the midst of Los Angeles Unified School District contract negotiations: "As a bottom line, we just can't do the work involved in restruc- I turing when we are feeling trampled." That sense of being trampled included: pay cuts, repeated denials of waivers to try things that school sites had determined were centrally important to their effort, and the inability to secure even minimal resources. Interestingly, "neglect" on the part of districts was viewed by some school restructurers as positive, and by others as negative. One school frankly declared that the fact the district "wasn't looking" had allowed them to make substantial headway on their restructuring. By the time anyone noticed, they had already built a solid base, as the following staff member explained: "At first tile district was irrelevant, they were so deep in crisis that they didn't notice what we were doing and it gave us an opportunity to insulate ourselves. They were no help, and we needed it do it ourselves. But it was a blessing. We developed our own staff development. They had to okay it because they had no plan of their own. Now things are tightening up, though, and it's getting harder. It worked better for us when they weren't noticing." But the Principal of a different school lamented:

260 2A9 The Unfinished Journey "If we believe something is possible to do, and we are willing to do it, the district ought to let us go ahead and make sure we have the clear sailing. That should be their jobnot just to say yes, but to clear the regulatory path. They should come and learn about our plan, and help us figure out what will require waivers and help us work things through. Instead it's all up to us. We don't have that knowledgethey have that knowledge. Support means actively contributing your expertise. And our district just doesn't go that step." One of the key areas of negotiation is control over teacher and administrator selection, placement and hiring. A critical element restructuring school sites say they need in order to progress with new teaching and learning is a faculty and administration that supports the changes and is willing and able to put in the time, creative energy and hard work to realize a new vision. The right to select faculty, including the principal, is a teacher-empowerment push at many restructuring school sites, viewed as necessary for autonomy and to develop a coherent educational program. "The two basic items schools need to pull off meaningful restructuring are the people and control over budget. A district must give schools the power to select the people that are there, from the principal down to the cafeteria staff, and the right to decide how to use human and material resources. Those two things don't cost extra money! They're policy relatedissues." Tom Ruiz, teachen International Studies Academy Some schools in our study, through initial district negotiation processes designed to encourage restructuring, had received the right to select a whole new staff or to pressure for voluntary transfers to other schools for teachers who weren't enthusiastic about the proposed changes.

New Roles for Unions Hiring may be largely a central district-school site renegotiationbut teacher reassignment and work load are key issues in school site-union dialogue. Teaching in a restructuring school is hard work, and seems to demand many extra unpaid hours. It requires a willingness to open the doors of the isolated classroom and spend time engaging with colleagues in a school-wide dialogue about effective teaching. Some teachers are not willing, not interested, or not able to meet these demands. As pressures mount on them from their colleagues, they sometimes turn to their unions to protect their rights. Furthermore, some restructuring plans require teachers to take on new roles beyond the classroom. All of these changes are hitting unions with tough challenges as teacher roles and work environments change in restructuring schoolsall in an era of budget cuts. The tension is everpresent in trying to protect teachers while not posing a barrier to changes that faculties at individual schools want. The role of unions, in fact, differs from district to district in some, they have been the engine that has pushed hardest for restructuring; in others, unions are viewed as a chief obstacle to restructuring. 253

Towards Restructuring an Entire Public School System 261 In Los Angeles, the move to create a site based management system grew largely through the teacher's union, United Teach- ers of Los Angeles (please see following "First Person" with union leader Linda Tubach). Similarly, in San Francisco, the IRTUE IS THE FOUNDATION OF ALL teachers union played a pivotal role in CH I EVEMENT NO HOUSE WHOSE _OUNDATION IS NOT SOLID- CAN BE putting restructuring on the district agenda ENDURING. THE MIND IS TUE. ROOT and in designing what that site based man- OF ALL OFFSHOOTS: NO TREEJHOSE agement system would look like. The staff ROOTS. :ARUROTTEV. position for the district restructuring initiative was jointly funded by the union and the district. However, in some districts, the union has been viewed by restructuring schools as Hallway mural, a major entrenched barrier to changes. One high school has submitted International Studies over one hundred requests for waivers to the union contract in order to Academy, San Francisco. proceed with its restructuring plan. Each request has been a battle. The waivers asked for such exceptions as: allowing teachers to serve in counseling roles, allowing administrators to teach classes, allowing certificated staff to be involved in interviewing and hiring new staff, the righr to vary the length of teaching blocks and frequency of preparation periods, the ability to alter the length of the work year, and flexibility in determining the number and length of faculty meetings. Another school, Oceana High in Pacifica has used their experiences with negotiating for multiple waivers from the union to draft new generic contract language for site based management schools. Unions have been especially wary of losing hard-fought rights for educators in relation to the extra hours syndrome found in so many restructuring schools. This became particularly problematic in the spring of 1993 in a few districts facing major contract negotiations with paycuts being proposed for teachers. Solidarity efforts within the union teaching force to hold work to paid hours, as well as the general demoralization of teachers who felt unsupported and unappreciated by the district and public, contributed to putting restructuring efforts on hold.

The Importance of Compliance, Monitoring and Resource Roles District level forces exert tremendous power in shaping the nature of restructuring at school sites. From our perspective, the most crucial role is to provide leadership, concrete support and vigilant reminders to school sites of their obligation to address the needs of all students and to provide access and equity in education. District resource personnel have been the mainstays of program development in bilingual education and desegregation. It is district office staff who have promoted compliance with legal protections related to access and equity for minority students. This work has been critical where school sites have lacked faculty with strong expertise in developing bilingual, second language acquisition and desegregation programs. To the extent that school restructuring means moving away from reliance on district administration, it becomes imperative that we not lose supports and compliance monitoring that schools need. District leadership

262 254 The Unfinished Journey (the administration and/or union) can set a vision that schools must ig address within their restructuringparticularly with regards to equity. "Compliance" has become a dirty wordassociated with bureaucracy, "Compliance" over-control, and conformity. Yet the entire apparatus of compliance and monitoring exists because historically schools left on their own have not has become a dirty met their legal obligations with regards to access and equity. Ignorance about the dimensions of racism, sexism and linguicism in school prac- wordassociated with tices, or resistance to addressing these problems, still are prevalent. We need, therefore, to be somewhat reticent about simply having faith that bureaucracy, over- school site decisions will result in attention to these issues. It is irrespon- sible to dismantle the compliance and monitoring system until schools, control, and communities and districts have developed and put in place the accountability mechanisms for meaningfully measuring equity and the differen- conformity. Yet the tial experiences of students of various national, cultural, racial/ethnic, gender and language groups. entire apparatus In most school districts, it is the district office and not the school site where data has been compiled, aggregated and interpreted. Sub-aggregat- of compliance and ed data on student participation and outcomes is important for guiding schools in assessing their effectiveness with specific subgroups of stu- monitoring exists dents. Therefore, the district data support role must be continued. One of the exciting aspects of restructuring is that school sites are becoming because historically more reflective and serious about examining their program. Data about their students must be central to this. schools left on their However, too often in the past, the data relationship between district office and school site has been tainted by a climate of blame and fear. It own have not met is important that this relationship be re-examined, and redeveloped. School sites, in this era of limited expertise on issues of language, culture their legal obligations and ethnicity, need more rather than less support from district resource personnel versed in these programmatic areas. Yet, many district offices with regards to access faced with financial cutbacks and with the "turning inward" of school sites find this crucial link in danger of being severely weakened. and equity. For an individual school to engage in restructuring does not necessarily require a district-wide effort. Support and frameworks help, but many 7 of the individual schools we studied found it possible to restructure regardless of whether there was a district plan. They somehow find their sources of support elsewhere, and, step by step, negotiate the waivers, permission and special conditions that arise with the district. But there is no question that reform would be smoother and far more widespread if restructuring took place on a district wide basisfirst, to ensure that restructuring schools have the kind of supports they need to proceed, and second, to respond to the basic need for system wide change. From the perspective of many restructuring schools, even a supportive district can be too constraining. Interest in becoming a charter school ran high among those interviewed in our study; by the time this report goes to press, one of the case study schools will have become a charter school, and two others will be deep in the process of writing their proposals and plans to follow suit. Charters are seen by these schools as the only way to remain part of the public school system while shedding the encumbrances of district bureaucracy and control.

255 Towards Restructuring an Entire Public School System 263 Little Support For Schools to Share Expertise A basic policy assumption underlying the funding of school restructuring has been that by creating a generation of restructured/ restructuring sites, others will be inspired to follow suit. Indeed, many of the schools which have more recently embarked on restructuring have been inspired by visits to other schools that are doing exciting things. However, most of the well-known "star" schools are heavily burdened by the number of requests to visitand some are closing their doors to visitors. Little attention has been paid to documenting the work of successful restructuring schools, or to other means of cultivating and supporting those following generations of schools that wish to restructure. In the absence of that support, California will be able to boast of a few hundred "star" restructuring schools, and many thousands which have not benefited from the restructuring movement. As new expertise about whole school change and restructuring is developing in the field, and less and less money appears available to support new restructuring efforts, the problem is becoming greater. Where does this responsibility fall? Individual school sites need to develop mechanisms for sharing their experiences in ways which don't detract from their already overloaded mission of school change. Yet, just as they have greatly relied on visiting and learning from certain highly visible schools, they too must open their doors in some way so others can learn from them. Districts, the state infrastructure and private foundations can help out with this dilemma by providing resources to make it possible for these highly impacted schools to remain open to visitors. They also have a special role to play in documenting good practice, funding dissemination, bringing school teams together to codify lessons from restructuring, and assuring ongoing funding for new generations of restructuring sites. In New York, an innovative effort was developed around Central Park East Secondary School, one of the most visited schools in the nation. They sought foundation support for a center (the Center for Col- laborative Education) which advocates for restructuring, and organizes visits to schools which illustrate the central concepts in action, and organizes conferences. A community service component at the school sites provides students who staff the visitations. Visitors walk through the school escorted by these trained students and can return to the Center to view videotapes and talk to staff who are knowledgeable about what is happening at the schools. The important element is that it removes the burden from the school site. A visitor to O'Farrell Middle School in San Diego is also toured through the school by student hosts. Florin High School in Elk Grove and Valencia Park Elementary in San Diego have been visited so often, there are standard packets to acquaint visitors with the school program. One other school has limited visits to only one day each month, and then devotes a great deal of attention to making that day a good showcase for their efforts. Three schools which we very much wanted to visit because of their prominence in the field of restructuring simply refused. They declared that the faculty councils had decided the school simply couldn't handle more visitors during that school year. Many of the school sites we studied do send teams to conferences and workshops to share their work. Significantly, six of the case study

264 The Unfinished Journey sample schools also have become centers of teacher training. This is an exciting and important role for themaddressing the need to prepare new teachers for the realities of restructuring schools. The mechanisms are For example, in 1988-9, Melrose Elementary School, already a restructured shared decision making school, formed a partnership with few and haphazard for California State University, Hayward to develop an Urban Professional Development School specifically to train teachers for multi-ethnic, multi- sharing experiences lingual inner-city teaching. The model for teachers promoted by the program is one of professionalism, doing action research, networking and beyond each school participating in site based staff development coordinated through a shared decision making structure. In addition to training new genera- site, for utilizing the tions of teachers, the partnership has connected Melrose to expertise, research and facilitation skills from CSU-Hayward faculty member enormous expertise Louise Waters, their restructuring coach. New teachers trained by Mel- rose's veteran teachers experience first hand a school committed to excel- developing within lence, collaboration, and innovative multicultural and multilingual curriculum and instruction. restructuring schools Despite the few wonderful examples we can portray, the mechanisms are few and haphazard for sharing experiences beyond each school site, to foster innovations for utilizing the enormous expertise developing within restructuring schools to foster innovations in other schools, and for training a new in other schools, and generation of teachers with the skills to carry on restructuring. To continue the way we are, will not result in systemwide change, though it will for training a new nurture the restructuring efforts in some selected schools. System wide change requires deliberately created mechanisms addressing how to feed generation of teachers off of the experiences and momentum of the first generation of restructuring schools to nurture and build a second generation. with the skills to carry on restructuring. Towards a System-wide Perspective How is an entire district affected when only select schools are 77 restructuring? Teachers in restructuring schools who elect not to be involved with the changes, or who aren't "up to" restructuring, get placed elsewhere. Some leave because of the burden of extra work that becomes the normal expectation, because they aren't interested in the new approaches, or because they come to feel uncomfortable within the new climate of the school. Even where there isn't a formal hiring policy, schools that have developed some vision and restructuring momentum begin to attract change-oriented teachers in the districtand pressure teachers who don't fit to leave. In most of the case study sample schools, there was a strong undertone of identifying resistant and traditional teachers as real barriers to reform. Some schools, like Melrose, have figured out ways to train their own new teachers, through intern programs and partnerships with teacher credential programs. These new teachers from the start develop knowledge of the specific school community, the philosophy of the school and attitudes of risk taking and change orientation. Others depend on attracting the teachers who match their restructuring visions and efforts. Somehow, new principals bring their own faculty with them and/or faculty members recruit others from within the district and beyond. There is clearly a converging of the enthusiastic change-oriented teachers within a district to a few restructuring schools. 257 Towards Restructuring an Entire Public School System 265 Ai For individual schools creating supportive faculties, the pay off is strong. For example, schools trying to build strong language programs If there aren't entire recruit bilingual teachers hungry to teach limited English proficient students from the community. The new teachers are excited about working districts of change in a whole school devoted to a vision focused on bilingualism and biculturalism. So, wonderful changes get underwayfor that school, for oriented teachers, what those students. But what happens in the schools those teachers left behind? Is there are the implications for a notion that creating a center of reform activity around a specific kind of vision in one school will have a ripple effect on the other schools? Do system wide change? Is restructuring schools require a different "kind" of teacher? If there aren't entire districts of change oriented teachers, what are the implica- anyone puzzling over tions for system wide change? Is anyone puzzling over these systemwide concerns? Where is the dialogue and policy debate about strategies for these systemwide achieving system wide change? Our research raised serious concerns about how the present situa- concerns? Where is the tionvoluntary individual school site changewill impact upon the overall school system. We are particularly concerned about common dialogue and policy practices we observed in school after school, in district after districtthe scramble for the resources and the concentration of those resources in a debate about strategies few schools. The patterns of attempting to create concentrations of change orient- for achieving system ed teachers is compounded by the stiff competition for restructuring funding. We were in the field during the intense spring of 1992 when wide change? schools were frantically trying to write proposals for SB 1274 demonstration grantsand we were in schools the following Fall when they received word about who won the grants and who did not. In the hunt for reform monies, there are, it appears, a few winners and many losers. There are simply not enough public demonstration funds or private foundation funds to support the number of schools wishing to restructure. It should be wonderful news that so many sites want to engage in whole school change. Instead, without the commitment of funding and supports for them to do so, the impulses for reform are being demoralized and squashed. One of the problems is that the winners seem to attract even more money and research supportthey become the showcases. Foundations ask them if they might be interested in doing a demonstration project. University researchers ask them if they can locate a new project on the schools site. Ten of the case study schools we studied had multiple sources of special funding for new projects and overall restructuring. But five others reported they were putting a halt to their restructuring altogether due to lack of resources (please see chapter 14, "The Role of Funding in the Restructuring Movement"). In many cases, there is significant jealousy within the district over who gets restructuring grants, who gets visibility for their reforms, who is being allowed to select faculty, etc. With these conditions, district wide relations are not easy and system wide change seems far in the future in most cases. And there are serious questions about whether individual schools changing will lead to the rest of the schools changing.

266 258 The Unfinished Journey Impact of Single-Site Restructuring on The Student Population If only a few schools in a district are restructuring, what implications In the hunt for reform does this have for student equity? The vast majority of schools we studied work with the student population that is given them. A few schools monies, there are, it in our sample, however, by becoming "schools of choice", adopted mechanisms which screened and in some ways selected their student appears, a few winners body. At the secondary level, student selection became an issue with regards to attempts at developing heterogeneous schools and the move- and many losers. There ment away from a comprehensive school model. Cutting out certain populations of students was not a deliberate design or conscious decision are simply not enough in fact, the overall rhetoric was that programmatic changes would not change and narrow the student population. But in looking at the actual public demonstration student statistics, in talking with individual teachers, clearly there has been a shift that they privatelybut cannot publiclyacknowledge. In funds or private one case, for example, a school became an academic alternative school. Student interviews were instituted with minimum criteria for enrollment. foundation funds to Lower level ESL students, for example, were advised not to attend the school. Parents and students were also asked to sign an agreement to support the number of basic principles of the schools. In another case, a school that was down- sized needed to redefine what was essential. The sports program was cut, schools wishing to resulting in the loss of substantial numbers of African American students, and it was also decided that ESL would not be a feature of the restructure. program. These kinds of major decisions impact other schools in the district. For each of the schools we saw moving towards a more selective program, there was the flipsideother schools receiving students who either self-selected out, or were somehow cut out, of the restructuring schools because the important program for them was not being offered. In all five cases, the students "lost" from the restructuring schools were either African American or immigrant.

Drawing by Cecilia Rodriguez, Carr Intermediate School, Santa Ana

Towards Restructuring an Entire Public School Syste2 59 267 One of the offshoots of the "star" restructuring schools is that parents who are knowledgeable about the schools in the district and have the savvy to "work the system", fight to get their children enrolled. This is changing the student composition of the well known restructuring schools. Some of these schools are now having difficulty in retaining the diversity they started with. In several schools, active recruitment campaigns have become very important because the faculty is dedicated to preserving the diversity of the student body. Five of the schools we visited in our study placed this high on their agenda and accomplished it by such strategies as visiting churches in the African American community, holding recruitment meetings in the immigrant Latino community, doing presentations at selected elementary schools, and working with district offices to enable schools to have some control over their student enrollment to retain diversity.

Conclusion: Re-visioning Role.s and a Focus on System-wide Reform This is a time of renegotiation. Old protections and safeguards with regards to teachers' working conditions and roles are being tested. Meanwhile, not-so-old protections and safeguards for ensuring access for racial and linguistic minorities are also being eroded through experimentation with new educational ideas, but lessening accountability. It is, in this sense, a time of both danger and opportunity. Unions must redefine what it means to protect their membership. It may mean the creation of schools in which teachers have more flexibility and more influence on decision making. Districts must redefine what it means to provide leadership and hold schools accountable at the same time. This may require allocating more authority and power to the school site, while offering more district-level resource support and leadership vision, and creating opportunities for dialogue about accountability systems. Some innovative schools now view as one of their "survival skills" the ability to negotiate resources and support for site reforms from their district central office and union without accepting constraints. Such schools must look again at the legitimate need for system wide vision. There are five critical aspects in the process of renegotiating the relationship between restructuring school sites, unions and the district administration. These will be key to ensuring system wide reform for all children: Vigilance about accountability for meeting the needs of all students Data collection and analysis to be used by schools, districts and the public to ensure accountability for equity and quality for students Commitment to funding and supporting the time demanded of educators to engage in whole school reform, and the involvement of all schools in restructuring for equity

268 The Unfinished Journey Technical and resource support in areas where the expertise is not yet developed at the school sites, such as in bilingual education and multicultural education Training and professional development infrastructures and strong leadership in shaping a vision of equitable schools and system wide reform.

One child's vision of their dream school.

261

Towards Restructuring an Entire Public School System 269 aiSi gillnLUAU ADO C THE STATE'S SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING TEAM: The California Center for School Restructuring

The plementation of SB 1274, the state's This meant modelling an educational and con- restructuring initiative, has been greatly depen- structivist approach even as early as the first bid- dent upon its interpretation by the field. Six per- ders conferences. School personnel were encour- cent of the authorization was set aside for an aged to come in teams, the conference was infrastructure-3 percent for administration, and interactive, and small group brainstorming activi- 3 percent for assistance and outreach to schools ties were emphasized around themes such as: and communities involved in restructuring. The What does powerful learning look like? Feel like? bulk of the infrastructure money went to the San Szabo explained, "Fundamentally, we wanted Mateo County Office of Education to set up a them to know that this whole initiative is about California Center on School Restructuring. Staff rethinking schools." were chosen based on their experience in whole The first SB 1274 Request for Proposals school change efforts. This was at the urging of directed schools to analyze student learning and California Department of Education staff imple- achievement patterns, to envision what they menting SB 1274 who were adamant that the leg- would like students to be like in five years and islation by itself would not propel a focused effort how they plan to get there. The language was con- centered on the needs of students. Their fear was sistently student focused. Criteria emphasized that it would be interpreted primarily in terms of consensus building and inclusion. The language site based management and governance issues used to describe restructuring work relationships rather than in terms of student learning. CDE included "sharing," "critiquing work together," staff viewed it, rather, as an occasion to engage "co-coaching," and "learning communities." This schools in deep thinking about children and what is different from the models of restructuring they need. adopted in other areas of the country. In January of 1991, Maggie Szabo was chosen As the initiative progressed, it became clear as Director of the California Center for School that a staff of two people was insufficient to sup- Restructuring (CCSR). Szabo's prior experience port the 142 funded SB 1274 schools. CCSR rec- had been with the Coalition for Essential Schools. ognized schools cannot do this alone. So they set One year later, pressed with the need for addition- about to establish 12 regional networks of schools al staff, she hired another Coalition for Essential to draw upon each other's experiences, and infra- Schools staffer, Steve Jubb. Their leadership cru- structures of support for each of these networks in cially shaped what would become the spirit and partnership with county offices of education. Each process of SB 1274 in California. of these is headed by a "regional lead" who con- The early publications from the CCSR stressed venes a broad circle of county office and other the importance of questioning and thinking at personnel with expertise on school change to offer school sites: As Szabo explained: to the SB 1274 schools. Some of these provide traditional technical assistance or professional devel- "Schools have always had checklists of opment support. The CCSR is emphasizing more things to do, inputs required. They were of a coaching role and the establishment of net- told 'If only you do x,y, and z, you'll have works of coaching support. Steve Jubb explains: better schools'. SB 1274 could have been another checklist. The challenge was for us to think as educators, as people wanting to engage schools in thinking."

270 262 The Unfinished journey "Coaching is more a function than a per- The Research and Development schools were son. Schools need an outside lens to look brought together in regional clusters to try to at their work. The more lenses you can define: "How can we create a system by which we get on what students need, on what can learn accurately and honestly what schools schools are doing, the better a school will are doing, and invent a system of accountability?" be. Parents can do it. Students can do it. "What would an ongoing authentic system of All kinds of experts in the community can accountability be?" By April of 1994, all schools do it. It's about bringing a different lens. will participate in the assessment process. But it has to be clear that it's coaching CCSR now has three regional offices in the tied to a wide vision of a whole school." San Mateo, Sacramento and Los Angeles County Offices of Education. Maggie Szabo is adamant The more questions and diverse perspective that it's not just schools that need to change, but solicited, the more meaningful reflection and that the entire infrastructure and approach to reform schools can undergo, according to CCSR. motivating and changing schools from outside At heart, CCSR views its role as inspiring this also needs to be rethought and rechanneled. For kind of reflective reform process. An example is the CCSR, this means continually questioning and their approach to accountability. Every school reflecting on their own approach: receiving SB 1274 grants agrees to participate in an accountability system. CCSR chose not to "We do a lot of listening to schools. And impose an accountability system upon the schools, then, having listened, we ask what do we but to engage schools as co-creators of that sys- need to do differently to better support tem. An announcement was sent out to all SB schools in this process." 1274 schools: "Based on what we have learned from restructuring schools, we are mounting a collaborative research and development effort aimed at building some examples of the School Change Portfolio and how it can be used to guide and focus restructuring work. We will need approximately 18 schools to help us in this effort. If you have developed holistic student outcomes and use them to examine student learning, we would like you to consider being part of the R & D team which begins work in April."

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263 Towards Restructuring an Entire Public School System 271 Linda Tubach

Linda Tubach is a history teacher at Franklin Senior High School in Los Angeles. She became part of the Humanitas Project through the Los Angeles Educational Partnership several years ago, and works with a team of teachers within Franklin in piloting a Humanitas core.She is also a union activist, and a strong participant in the effort to create a site based management system and process within Los Angeles Unified School District. This profile, in Linda's words, tells of the efforts of teachers to gain more control over the conditions of their work and to play a central role in reforming schools to be more responsive to the needs of students.

264 272 1-61 COPY (ARABLE The Unfinished Journey A Union Representative's Perspective by Linda Tubach

CC here is no question that shared decision making and restructuring at our school was a direct outgrowth of the '89 teachers strike. It became one of the demands of the strike. Teachers have always been seeking more professional rights and decision-making authority over curriculum and school programs. But in '89 we had the model of what was going on nationally. Helen Bernstein, the president of our union, had gone to Dade County and to Rochester to study their school site-based management systems. The LAUSD process of school- based management was modeled after Dade County. Frankly, at our school, I don't think that our staff really understood what that aspect of the Union demands were all about during the strike. Wemyself includedmostly thought we were striking for economic justice. Those were the issues that riveted us. And it wasn't until some teachers from another district came to speak to us and support our pick- et line that I personally realized how important school-based management was. So the strike itself became an educating process for our teachers about site based management. The whole issue was a major focus of the contract. It was the reason why we stayed out on strike for almost two weeks. We could have settledthemoney issue a lot soonerand the district was willing to settle on the money because the money was there. But we stayed out on strike to ensure that the principals were not given veto power in the shared decision-making process. This is what most dis- tinguishes what we were pushing for then from the LEARN proposal that has eventually prevailed and models the principal after a CEO with ultimate decision-making power and accountability. I was a rank-and-file teacher at Franklin during the strike, so I wasn't involved in district negotiations. I got elected as union rep after the strike at the beginning of our move towards site based management. I recognized that this was an opportunity to be able to make some structural changes at our school, to do some basic things that could really raise student achievement and better meet student needs. There was a core of us who were excited. I guess you could say it was about improving our working conditions, the conditions of teaching and learning in the classroom. And it was about seizing an opportunity that we had sacrificed for in the strike, and making the most of this opportunity to improve Franklin. It took a lot of talking to people at the school, getting them to see that site based management was a real chance for us as a school, and we got people to vote for the site based management plan. We stressed that this was a kind of a no-risk opportunity. We told them that if they didn't like what we came up with they could vote it down, but we needed them to support our effort to try and create something. That's how we got the 70 percent approval we needed to write a plan for school-based management. And then we wrote a plan that was actually rather broad and vague and was based on pilot projects and volunteersit didn't actually require chat anybody do anything. We kind of capitulated to the conser- vatism of some of the staff in that respect. For example we didn't vote on a specific new school schedule; we simply said we would create one. It's

First Person: Linda Tubach 265 273 been several years that its taken us to actually create a schedule. I think it's taken us that long because there hasn't been sufficient management support. But, however slowly, we are beginning to move forward. The contract provided a district framework to allow us to move forward and to petition for more control. But it was left up to us to implement it. And since our plan was really a framework for change more than a blueprint, it was very difficult to implement. It was particularly hard to implement because there's no money to support teacher time to create new programs. The contract negotiation gave us some restructuring rights and process, but didn't include any real financial or job description change, or extended pay allocations. I think the union just didn't think that would be winnable at the time. I don't think the district was willing to provide relief time for teachers. They never have been. So, we wrote it into our school site plan that I, as coordinator, should get one hour of relief time a day. I was the only person that got that. That aspect of our school-based management plan gave me a little bit more breathing room to write some additional grant proposals so that we could have money to do school-wide staff development. We were able to do that because we qualified for the pupil-free days (SB 1882) as a school-based management school. In that way again, the district wide union contract had paved the way for us. Our plan was approved by the teachers and eventually by the district's central council, which was a body of union, district and community people that reviewed everybody's school-based management plans. The first time around, our plan was rejected for inadequately speaking to the needs of LEP students. We had failed to even include in our plan any discussion of the demographics of our school ai.d how our plan was going to address those demographics. There were some real basic flaws in our original plan, which they picked up on. So we had to come back with a revised version, which was a good process to go through. The district and union people that informed us that we would have to resubmit it were supportive. They said, 'We're not rejecting the entire thing, but we're very concerned about this weakness and we think you need to strengthen it.'

Changes at Franklin Through our site based management system, we played a key role in hiring a new assistant principal that is reform minded. That's been one of the shifts at Franklin. We now have a new person on the management team who is very aggressive about school reform. She's a bump-down from the bureaucracy in the district. She was head of Curriculum and Instruction, and that office was closed as part of the budget cuts downtown; she had to be placed at a school site. In fact, we had to reopen the application process for the job in order to ensure that she could be a can- didate. And that was kind of unprecedented. Not too many school-based management schools have actually had an opportunity to hire a management person. The contract was essential to lay the framework for all this. Then the ability to hire our new Vice Principal who has a strong reform agenda was important. But now we're also going through accreditation. We had said in our school-based management plan that when accreditation arrived, we would use that process to review the school program and

274 26 The Unfinished Journey evaluate our school based management plan. Accreditation requires self- gg study and requires that the whole school be involved in reviewing the school program, so we got everybody talking about Second to None, Our agenda will be because you now have to evaluate your school in relation to that process of school reform. The accreditation process requires departments to sit how to take down and review their instructional practices and what's holding back improvements in those practices. So the process has really got a lot of school reform people involved, and that has spilled over into our school based management process. At our upcoming planning retreat, many Department beyond pilot projects Chairs are attending, and every department's represented. Our agenda will be how to take school reform beyond pilot projects to a school-wide to a school-wide level. level, with special attention to revising our master schedule to create longer and fewer classes. ff Accreditation gave everybody a chance to sit back a little and think about and appreciate our plan, because our plan is clearly on the right track. It also gave everybody a chance to see that we couldn't really move our plan forward unless there were certain structural changes at the school, particularly with regards to the school schedule. We needed to be able to create more planning time for teachers, more time for committee work, and more time to carry out the curriculum strategies and projects in our plan. For example, community service is a graduation requirement that we want to implement. But whereas it's a terrific idea, you've got to have time to implement it. You've got to have somebody in charge of it. You've got to have a committee work it out. But in our current schedule, we just haven't been able to pull it off. Who wants to volunteer more time with a 10% pay cut? The pay cut really set back people's interest in volunteering more time, but this discussion we're having now about our new school schedule that will create time during the school day for these projects and reduce the teacher: student ratio has got everybody pretty excited. The move to a ninety minute block schedule is profound for a high school. But we can't just jump in. I don't think people are ready to collaborate. I think people need to concentrate on how to teach their subject better, and a new time framework will facilitate that. You can't teach the same old way in a 90-minute class period.

The LEARN Agenda/The Contract Opportunity But here we are now, almost four years after the strike, and a lot has happened. We've had huge pay cuts, the threats of breaking up the district, a lot of bad stuff between the district and the union. And, LEARN has placed its reform agenda and process squarely into the center of things. I think in many ways, school based management has been abandoned by both the union leadership and by the district in favor of LEARN's process. I think the prevailing view of our union leadership has been that if we didn't support the LEARN process and we didn't collaborate with the corporate and district folks on that process, that we would be more vulnerable to a breakup of the district. So as far as I know, there aren't any new school-based management schools. Some schools just caught on to the importance of this motion like a year or two ago, and wrote plans that got rejected. It's like they missed that little window of opportunity. 267 First Person: Linda TubacI 275 Ai From the teachers' perspective, there is a lot that we lose in the LEARN approach as opposed to the shared decision-making approach Giving up our ability to won through union-district negotiations. In many ways, the reform ideas and process are the same. However, in the LEARN approach, there is no have an equal vote, democratic decision-making process in which everyone shares equally. The principal is the final arbiter of any changes at the school. It is the where the principal is CEO business model. As far as any changes in the school program, it is the Principal who is the ultimate decision-making power. So from the just one person who perspective of those of us who believe in democratic decision making and in the importance of teacher perspectives on the school program, it's the votes if it comes governance section that's the real problem for us. At first the district and the unioa thought that school-based manage- to a vote, is something ment schools would be the most interested in becoming involved in the new LEARN process because the basic framework of LEARN is very we couldn't do. similar to school-based management and the kinds of reform in a school program that they suggest. Plus and this is a big plus there's the promise of money and support there, as well as school site control of budgets. That's all very attractive. But giving up our ability to have an equal vote, you know, where the principal is just one person who votes if it comes to a vote, is something we couldn't do. Because our principal, although very supportive, is not the catalyst for change. It's mostly been a core of teachers. I think the union's still willing to support school-based management in schools, but I don't think that they feel that it is the reform process that's going to work districtwide. I think they feel that the district has badly tarnished it and was never willing to discipline principals that wouldn't cooperate with shared decision-making. Because there are a lot of principals that wouldn't, and really undermined it. It didn't work because there wasn't sufficient district support and the district wasn't holding principals accountable to being real democratic team players at their school sites. In places like Dade County or in Rochester or some of the other places where it's really working, there are strong reform-minded superintendents. To me it just goes to show that school reform has got to be a school- site debate, and it's got to be driven by school staff and parents and students. That's who's there to stay. That's who has the greatest investment, and the most impact upon the outcome. It cannot succeed as a top-down process. And we're going to hang onto it as long as we can. For us at Franklin, with our school based management process, I'm feeling pretty good. This is the decisive time when we're either going to make a breakthrough on a master schedule that will lay the material conditions for real school reform, or not. If we make the breakthrough, I think that things are really going to move forward. If we don't, it's bad. But I think we'll come through this with some kind of schoolwide change. No more little pilot projects; it will be schoolwide. If we ratify a new school schedule, then we'll have a whole year to get ready for it, because we wouldn't implement it this coming school year. We would train for it. We'd use our pupil-free days and our SB1882 money to start training people in a much more serious way in cooperative learning strategies, project-based curriculum, and portfolio assessment. We also will submit a number of amendments to our school-based management plan, because our school-based management plan expires next year and it has to be resubmitted.

276 The Unfinished Journey None of this would have been happening at Franklin without the union contract language, for sure. The changes we're able to consider now schoolwide simply wouldn't have happened. The contract was essential in terms of what it started, as well as a continuing protective force. We're still protected by the same contract language, and when we run into some glitches in trying to move forward, we have the contract language and union personnel to help us out. The contract is essential.

269

First Person: Linda Tiebach 277 CHAPTER 14

THE ROLE OF FUNDING IN THE RESTRUCTURING MOVEMENT

Funding the public schools is the largest fiscal responsibility of the state of California. In the context of the recession that has plagued our state over the past several years, there can be no serious discussion of school reform without taking into account the financial implications. Restructuring has been heavily shaped by the current budget and resource reality in California. Total California spending for public school support is now$25billionthe largest percentage of the state budget and an increase of$12billion since 1980. Because of rapid enrollment increases and inflation, it now takes $2 billion more each year in public school support just to stay even. Despite spending what sounds and feels like huge total sums, in most national comparisons, California ranks near the bottom in funding for public schools. The state spends$24,000less per classroom than other industrialized states, and less than the national average of all states. High spending states, such as New York or New Jersey, spend as much as $120,000 more per classroom per year than California. Despite passage of Proposition 98 in 1988 by voters to protect funding for public schools, inflation-adjusted per-pupil expenditures have declined since its passage. While actual dollars increased for schools, real per-pupil spending fell5.2percent between 1988-89 and 1990-91, due to inflation. Complicating the squeeze on education funding has been the unpre- dictability of total dollars available. The past decade began with two years of spending declines, followed by six years of growth, and then two years of a return to declinemaking long-term planning very difficult. Another way to understand funding for schools is as a percentage of personal income. It is estimated that Californians spent4%of their individual income on public schools in 1990, compared to the 4.6% percent national average. California has been lower than the national average each year for the past decade. These funding level variations from state to state do make a difference. According to an analysis by PACE (Policy Analysis of California Education), most elementary schools in the higher spending midwest and northeast states have, in addition to one teacher for every20to25 students, an extra resource person supported by categorical grants, a music and art teacher, perhaps a science teacher, a physical education teacher, a reading specialist and a librarian. Most California elementary schools, by contrast, have one teacher for every 30 students and, at most, one extra specialist. At the middle school level, higher spending states have seven or eight, rather than six, periods per day along with comprehensive electives including advanced foreign languages. California middle schools usually have six periods and a minimal array of electives. In short, concludes PACE, California's lower spending produces fewer program offerings for students and larger class sizes. This situation has worsened in the context of the fiscal squeeze on schools in the last several years.

278 270 The Unfinished journey National Comparison of Spending per Pupil: California Ranks 40th in Support per Child (1993)

New Jersey New York Connecticut Alaska Delaware Pennsylvania Rhode Island Massachusetts Maryland

110 D.C. I Vermont Wisconsin SPENDING PER PUPIL (ADA)

Maine I New Hampshire Michigan Indiana Minnesota Virginia Oregon 120 Hawaii Ohio U S. AVERAGE $5,686 -* West Virginia Wyoming Washington Montana GAP: $1,117 Colorado Illinois Florida Kansas I 130 N. Carolina Iowa Nevada Georgia Kentucky California's 91/92 rankingTexas -Nebraska Missouri New Mexico Arizona 140 CALIFORNIA $4,569 S. Carolina Louisiana S. Dakota Oklahoma Arkansas N. Dakota Tennessee Alabama Mississippi 150 ) Idaho MN Utah

$3,000 $4,000 $5,000 $6,000 $7,000 $8,000 $9,000 $10,000 $11 000

Source: California Department of Education 7/93

The Role of Funding in the Restructuring Movement 271 2 79 if Restructuring in a Budget Crisis The climate of the The effect of budget cuts on many schools in our sample has been devastating. It is very hard to talk about new ways to meet student needs fiscal crisis in the state when the counseling staff has just been totally slashed or class sizes have gone up again. In many schools, restructuring is about trying to do more affected almost all of with less: putting in more hours while anticipating potential pay cuts, trying to personalize instruction while living with increased class sizes. Even the schools we studied. some of the most committed faculties are becoming paralyzed by the threat or the reality of strikes and pay cuts. In some places, however, desperation over these very conditions convince a school to restructureto 79 try something new because the status quo is growing ever more untenable. One Bay Area high school, for example, became overwhelmed when class sizes grew from 28 to 35 students, and the counseling staff was cut from four to one to serve the student body of over 2,000 students. Out of desperation, the school decided to try restructuring. In this case, that meant moving to block scheduling as a way to create reduced and more manageable teacher-student contacts. But in many schools, cutbacks and lack of even basic support are so debilitating that reform cannot begin or be sustained. Meanwhile staff at some schools felt they had sufficient resources to provide a strong basic program plus most of the major reform innovations they wished to attempt. Despite this range, the climate of the fiscal crisis in the state affected almost all of the schools we studied. One of the standard political beliefs is that restructuring is about accomplishing better outcomes with the same financial supportthat it is, fundamentally, about rearranging existing funds and programs to achieve greater ends. Cutting waste, rethinking inefficiencies, spending money on the "right" things, doing more with less, are assumed to be the theory in practice. But while that is a popular political belief, it is not shared by the leaders of most of the actual reform initiatives. These initiatives have rested on an assumption that seed funding is neededto engage schools in an initial "changeover" process, to pay for planning and professional development to

280 272 The Unfinished Journey affect the desired innovations. But even the need for this funding has been Ai viewed as short-term onlyto get things started toward the goal of creating a restructured school. Many of the leaders who argue for seed money Restructuring is not a suggest that after a finite period of time, extra funding would be no longer necessaryschools could continue their restructuring without those re- finite process. The sources. Or, conversely, schools could accomplish "restructuring" and be done after four or five years of effort. need is ongoing for After visiting schools, we began to understand the importance of resources quite differently. What schools are primarily seeking through time together to their restructuring funds are: time and mechanisms for reflection and planning (release time and retreat and facilitation costs), travel time to engage in reflection visit other schools, professional development associated with new reform directions and "tangibles" such as new computers and hardware and and planning, for materials. Indeed some of these are special "upfront" needs that lessen as time goes on. But restructuring is not a finite process. The need is ongoing professional for time together to engage in reflection and planning, for professional development resources, for visiting other schools, for accessing research development resources, and bringing in substantive consultants. The need is ongoing, then, for a new level of funding. for visiting other This wave of school restructuring, has in fact been greatly affected and nurtured by private foundation funds as well as state demonstration schools, for accessing project dollars. Corporate support, flowing from the leadership of the California Business Roundtable, has also played an important role. In research and bringing California there is a network of Pacific Telesis restructuring schools, there is a MCSIP (the Mid California Science Improvement Program) in substantive network of schools restructuring around brain compatible learning funded by the Packard Foundation, there are Nabisco 20th Century schools. consultants. The need The Stuart Foundations, San Francisco Foundation, Rockefeller Founda- tion, and others have been important in not only supporting, but also in is ongoing, then, for a shaping restructuring initiatives in the state. A foundation consortium pooled 1.3 million dollars to match state funds in order to launch the SB new level of funding. 620 Healthy Start Initiative. These funds have been essential. As the principal of one of the schools we studied declared "We had a vision, but it wouldn't have happened if it were not for the foundation support." The desire and need for special funding to support the work of restructuring is spawning a universe of grant seeking schools. As the basic funding for schools is eroded, and as schools clearly recognize the necessity of additional funding to support their change efforts, they are turning to private foundations for support. Here are samples of what we heard in the field: "We've established a full time grant writer." "We've come to the conclusion now we have to seek more grants." "Unless the climate changes dramatically, grant writing will be the way to raise money." "This school has got to find other ways of getting money besides relying on state funds. So a lot of our teachers are now being trained in grant writing skills." "The challenge is finding the funding we need. We're going to start checking out foundations."

273 The Role of Funding in the Restructuring Movement 281 dd "We're spending a lot of time now developing grants with the help of a person in the downtown district office." ,The desire and need "Since we didn't get SB 1274, things are slowing down a lot, but for special funding to we're committed to the plan so we'll look elsewhere for funds." "If we had gotten SB 1274 we'd be charging ahead, but now we support the work of have to put our minds to finding the money elsewhere. It simply can't be done without resources." restructuring is "Our Principal has been great at getting a lot of grants for us." spawning a universe "We are a grant writing school and have been for a long time, that is what has given us the edge in restructuring." of grant seeking "According to the Coalition of Essential Schools, you have to have at least 10% extra money to restructure. So that's our target for schools. As the basic our grant writing." funding for schools is Private foundation funds have played a big role in enabling a select number of schools to move well ahead with meaningful restructuring. eroded, and as schools But there isn't enough to go aroundthe competition is stiff. Private foundations cannot fund e. :Ty school that decides to restructure. They clearly recognize the generally view their role quite differently given their limited resources, that is to strategically fund demonstration projects. necessity of additional While schools need ongoing support, the sources of restructuring funds cannot serve that role. As one funder explained: funding to support "Foundations cannot be counted on to provide ongoing fund- their change efforts, ing for restructuring or continue to support startup costs for newly restructuring schools. I predict it will be even harder for they are turning to schools to secure future support from foundations for restructuring. We've come through a phase in which philanthropic dol- private foundations lars have supported the start up of demonstrations, to see if school turnaround can really happen. The next big question for support. becomes how we can take this to scale. If foundations are going to continue to invest in restructuring, it is likely to be in explor- IF ing these systemic issues, rather than funding individual schools. So to look to foundations as a source of major funding for the second wave of restructuring schools is very unrealistic." Sylvia Yee, San Francisco Foundation Foundation grants buy needed time and resources and often serve as an important source of credibility for restructuring schools. Funders have had a strong influence not only over whether schools get the resources to restructure, but also over what schools do with their restructuring. We noted that restructuring has also become for some schools a mechanism for getting grants and additional funds to supplement their skimpy budgets. Under the fiscal squeeze many schools face, some feel compelled to try something "cutting edge" mainly because it will he fundable and may help offset budget cuts, as opposed to because they think it is the best next step for their school and their students. In the desperation and scramble for money, schools' reform directions shift as the funding fads shift. What the foundations and state projects prod, schools do, because money is so necessary to make changes. Currently, funders are mostly supporting innovative uses of technology, developing schools in line with the state frameworks and reform

282 21 ,4 The Unfinished Journey reports, and linking human services to schools. The types of reforms that are generally receiving very little support are those which focus on specific groups of students, including innovative programs for limited English proficient student and for multicultural curriculum. Programs focussing on equity for students of diverse racial, cultural and linguistic groups have enjoyed only minor support from the foundation community as relates to school restructuring.

A School View on Funding In the field, in schools deeply immersed in a restructuring process, the understanding of the role of resources is quite different from the popular conceptions of foundation and funding mechanisms. The following is what we learned. First, effective school restructuring cannot occur on a weak foundation. A solid infrastructure requires sufficient staff to both instruct classes and implement school programs, adequate instructional materials, stability among teachers and administrators, reasonable class sizes, and professional development supports. An eroding financial base for schools, a critical shortage of bilingual teachers, and the lack of professional development in key areas related to the diversity of students, are major barriers to effective education and restructuring that have long existed and remain entrenched. Until these issues are resolved, restructuring is hampered in creating the schools we need for this diverse society. As one principal insisted: "We always need more resources these days for anything we dofor the regular program or for restructuring. We're under- funded. That's one of the problems with running a school. So it's not just that we need resources in order to restructure. We need resources periodfor all the tasks of a school." In nearly all of the schools we visited that were able to move ahead with restructuring, additional resources of some kind were necessary to make significant changes. According to the schools we studied, change requires the resources of time, materials, travel and training, which translate to money. If these are not covered through some source of extra funding, they must be found through in-kind contributions from university projects, consultants, and other partnerships. The need for resources to support the change process is ongoing. Good restructuring schools continue to be restructuring schools. There is no "deadline" where they drop all of their new innovations and return t ) how they used to be. There is no point at which they have "arrived" and cease to need professional development, collaborative meeting time, curriculum development and research. Money is needed to pay for all of these.

275 The Role of Funding in the Restructuring Movement 283 id "There needs to be some ongoing financial source for the restructuring we are doing. For example, you can't have an intense two All the schools but one days of planning in the school cafeteria sitting on wooden chairs and have it be productive. You need resources to find a comfort- scrambled for some able place for teachers and certificated staff and parents to really engage with each other, to create the environment for the kinds of outside resources to heavy planning and listening and thinking we need to do. And anyone who thinks you can plan once and then that's enough, help them accomplish doesn't understand organizational change. You plan and you revisit that plan, and you reflect and you try things and you restructuringmost reflect some more and you re-plan, and that's how schools need especially to help them to be. And you can't plan without time to do it and without the place to do it. And that costs money." buy time for quality Another principal reflected on the effect of the short-term special funding, and concerns he had about finding more funding to continue their work: planning. "It's a matter of expectations. Restructuring leads to changes and new projects and new excitement. There's an enrichment of the delivery of services that gives you a reputation in the community, and it comes to be expected of your school. If you lose that sup- plemental enrichment after three or four years, it's heard and felt in the community. You may have to pull out a program that you had installed as part of your restructuring, but people still expect it to be there. And then there's the expectations of the teachers, that their ideas and efforts will be supported and sustained. I just feel a lot of responsibility and pressure to keep the resources flowing for our school to maintain people's expectations that have been raised through restructuring." Only one school reported to be restructuring without extra funds and it was receiving resources and services from a university project that bought the staff time for planning retreats, a facilitator-coach, and a link to research. All others scrambled for some outside resources to help them accomplish restructuringmost especially to help them buy time for quality planning. Some schools with a large pot of categorical funds also relied upon reconfiguring those to fuel their restructuring. People in schools do not want to have to continue forever subsidizing their work through their own personal resources. Nor do they believe it will be possible to sustain their activities without ongoing stable resources. There is a palpable sense of time pressure among these educators that they must demonstrate to the public and politicians that their work pays off and prove that they should be entrusted with stable public funding in support of their restructuring. "We're in a catch-22 stalemate, I think. There's no way we can convince the general public to pay any more money for the results they are now getting from schoolsnot in this recessionary period. So there's no political support right now for giving us stronger fundingthere just isn't. On the other hand, we cannot continue as a society to fund schools at this low level. So our only hope is to try to prove in this window of opportunity that good things can happen if people will only give us the latitude to restructure and the resources we need to make it happen. That's the hope. So the schools that have some support we better deliver!" 284 0 1 The Unfinished Journey Another person cautions: "We all want some good press about what we're doing. We think it's important that the public have a sense that good things are happening in our schools. But it's happening because of the voluntary time we put inthe week after week of unpaid Saturdays spent meeting with colleagues instead of going to our children's soccer games. And we want people to know what we can accomplish because the general mood is that we're a bunch of idiot schools who can't get the results from kids that schools used to get. And what do we do to prove them wrong? We do it for no money, we do it for free. And we end up proving them right that we had too much money in the beginning, and that by just trying harder and working more we can accomplish more with less. It lets them think that yes schools really did have too much money all this timeand that yes, its just a matter of teacher attitudes or something." For various reasons, districts often make it clear to schools embarking on restructuring that no extra funds are available. Yet some schools have been fortunate to have an administrator high up "go to bat" for their cause. In San Diego, for years the administration had made it clear that there could be no extra resources for restructuring schools. When the large Wilson Middle School became one of the first schools interested in restructuring to turn around student achievement and staff morale problems, then Assistant Superintendent George Frey convinced the district to make an exception and support Wilson's ambitions. It was also, in part, a statement to that community that the district was serious about change. As principal Kimiko Fukuda described it: "The ditrict allocated $100,000 to Wilson for a planning process for restructuring. Because of the history of problems at Wilson, the district felt the funds were justified. We used the money to send teachers around the country to visit schools which had restructured. We needed some kind of mechanism to really motivate what had become a very demoralized staff, and the district needed to demonstrate to the community that it was important. But it was more than that. We were one of the first schools out of the restructuring chute, and the district also wanted to give the effort a leg up. The resources were invaluable. It just flat out takes time and money to travel, to plan, to write, to meet, to reflect, to bring in consultants. We flatly couldn't have done it without the funds."

Conclusion In 1990, California Tomorrow released a policy report based upon research in the diverse classrooms of some of the state's cutting-edge teachers. Embracing Diversity: Teachers' Voices from California Class- rooms documented what these individuals were finding as they tried to teach across gaps of culture, race, language, national background and experience. The clearest and strongest message was that the challenges of

The Role of Funding in the Restructuring Movement 277 285 diversity require continual teacher learning. Students arrive in classrooms it from cultures teachers have not encountered beforeand with prior life As the public and experiences that present surprising and major challenges. The need for professional development, for reflection and networking with other inno- legislators come to vative teachers, for learning about the students and learning new teaching strategies is ongoing in a diverse society. There simply is no quick fix. understand the power If our communities care about supporting schools in making the changes necessary to educate all our children well for this complex and and potential of diverse society, it will require increased funding. It is both inappropriate and infeasible to depend upon private philanthropic dollars to support restructuring to reform an entire public schooling system at the levels necessary. School sites must be given the flexibility to be creative in reallocating and reconfigur- public schools, they ing existing resources. But it will also take increased levels of funding to pay for the extended time and action required to make changes. State will hopefully be funding levels and district-union contracts should provide for an increase of at least 10 percent to the school year for schools engaged in restruc- willing to come turingtime (and therefore salary) that is necessary for professional development, school-wide intensive dialogue and planning, and curricu- forward with the lum development. An infrastructure of data support, professional development, coaches, information clearinghouses on diversity and restructur- funding and other ing must be institutionalizedrather than dependent upon the soft short-term grant funding. supports it will take. Furthermore, sufficient funding must be provided to enable an entire school system to restructure. In a time of recession, this is hard to envision, but the California public has shown its willingness to support public school funding. As the public and legislators come to understand the power and potential of restructuring to reform public schools, they will hopefully be willing to come forward with the funding and other supports it will take.

\-r';9s APA A ilele pax

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Drawing by Estela Zavaka, Carr Intermediate School, Santa Ana

286 278 The Unfinished Journey CHAPTER 15

REFLECTIVE SCHOOL COMMUNITIES AND NEW ACCOUNTABILITY: KEYS TO A REFORMED SCHOOL SYSTEM

The four most important thrusts of the restructuring movement are the commitment to excellent education for all children, a new emphasis upon accountability for outcomes, the effort to create an inclusive process for all stakeholders, and a drive to develop reflective school communities utilizing the research on teaching anti learning. It is the combination of these elements that holds the strongest promise for delivering a public school system that meets the needs of society and the dreams of parents. In this still young movement, however, there is not yet clarity about who should be held accountable and how, or what should schools be held accountable for. And to whom are schools accountable? Only funders, or parents, community members, tax payers also? As restructuring schools develop mechanisms for reflection on their work, how can the tension be resolved between their right to self control versus the need for a strong external system of accountability? The call for accountability is not groundbreaking. For a decade, a mounting human services reform movement has called for a focus on outcomes for children, and a national and state school reform movement has called for the development of base indicators for assessing educational improvement. In 1991, a national panel authorized by Congress requested that new categories of education indicators be created. The National Education Goals Panel recommended indicators to assess the progress of six national goals for schools, but also identified a need for a variety of new indicators to be developed at the state levels. Largely missing in this snowballing movement for accountability, however, has been serious attention to issues of equity in relation to children's race, culture and language and how these issues affect both the goals, indicators and mechanisms of data collection. Insufficient thought has been devoted to how to create a racially, culturally and linguistically inclusive process for identifying what the indicators should be, and whose interests and needs should be represented. The growing national movement for accountability in education has been important for its focus on standards in general. It seems essential now that an accompanying emphasis be given to equitable education for diverse children, and that the reform movement and our schools be held accountable for these two goals as inextricable: Providing all students with a high quality curriculum which pre- pares them for the 21st century and for full productive participation in a complex and diverse society and Ending the achievement gaps between racial/ethnic groups, language groups and gender groups. 279 288 The Unfinished journey Restructuring schools show promise for becoming reflective community bodies, by promoting inclusive dialogue about what they are doing if and what they might do better. They are seeking to internally develop the Due to the legacy means of looking critically at their own practice. But historically in schools, breaking down the patterns of injustice and lack of access has of a history of depended uponbothindividuals within schools and external advocates. It is the "outsiders" who have monitored the incongruous experiences of inequitable access groups of students, and who have used that data to hold schools accountable where students are excluded, ill served or underserved. As to education, it is we wrote in the Introduction to this report: there is a tension in this era between building within schools the capacity to hold themselves account- imperative that schools able, and maintaining means of public accountability. The fear of continuing institutional inequities in schools does not and communities have suggest "lack of faith" in educators. Indeed, most of the teachers we have met and worked with in the field of educational reform care deeply data which can inform about justice and equity. This restructuring movement holds as its rallying cry, "Excellent education for all children". But caring about these them of the strengths issues. understanding the dimensions of how inequity occurs, and knowing how to change policy and practice to cause change are not the same and weaknesses of things. A concern for justice does not equal knowledge about how culture, language and race may be affecting school participation, experi- the school program ences and opportunities. As described in our chapter "Creating an Inclu- sive Dialogue," the persistence of colorblindness mixed with ignorance with regards to the and/or fear to confront bias and inequality has resulted in many schools falling silent on the subjects. History has taught us that eternal vigilance experiences of in matters of civil rights is necessary. Vigilance requires that we ask hard questions of ourselves and our practice. Vigilance requires that we gather particular groups the data which can tell us where our institutions are lapsing into patterns of exclusion, denial and/or differential impact. of students. We know that statewide, the achievement and participation gaps between students of different racial/ethnic groups persists. Latino and If African American students drop out at far greater rates than Asians and Whites. Only 19% of Native Americans complete the "A-F" requirements that qualify them for admission to the four year university system as compared to 55% of Asians. In a sample from the State, most districts have gaps between the highest achieving racial/ethnic group and the lowest of over 50 percentage points. Asians are almost always in the first or second highest achieving group, Latinos almost always in the lowest or second lowest place.

% of graduates 3 year completing A-F dropout rate requirements Native American 19.2 19.3 Asian 9.2 54.5 Pacific islander 16.0 24.9 Filipino 10.2 43.8 Hispanic 24.6 21.0 Black 26.4 27.2 White 10.8 34.2

source: CBEDS, California Department of Education, 10/92

Reflective School Communities and New Accountability: Keys to a Reformed School System 289 Critical, though, is that these statewide patterns mask far more complexity at the district and school sire level. There are schools that nearly erase these gaps. There are schools in which the top achievers are from the same racial groups that on a statewide basis are found at the bottom of indicators. Without site-specific data, it is difficult for individual schools to know what impact their programs are having and what they are doing that is having a positive or negative impact. Without data it's hard for schools to reflect on what they're doing and make adjustments. Also, it is difficult for a specific community and society overall to hold the school system accountable. The challenge facing the restructuring and student advocacy movements is to work together to design a new kind of accountability. This new approach should foster both the reflective climate within schools to work with the data that can tell them the most about student achievement and participation by group, and should also provide a supportive external system of accountability. Weaving the two together is where the creative work must begin. As the restructuring movement progresses increasingly afforded flexibility to innovate, freedom from the constraints of regulations and codesit is only through strong data systems, reflective processes and external accountability that reform efforts will hold themselves to delivering schools that work for all children.

In the Field Most of the restructuring schools we studied generally report that their schools are safer now, fewer students are falling through the cracks, and their schools are more personalized. Most also have a sense of improvement in student achievement since new forms of teaching and curriculum have been instituted. On the other hand, some people within almost every school voiced concerns about specific groups of students whose involvement in school and achievement were lagging behind the "norm." These reportsboth the positive and the concernedwere anecdotal, based upon impressions of individuals. Despite efforts to characterize the progress and impact of restructuring, despite the fact that restructuring schools seem hungry for information that will help them strengthen their program, few schools had student data accessible or used it to inform their restructuring activities. In every case study sample school we visited, we sought to collect some hard data about student experiencessubaggregated by race/ ethnicity. For all schools we requested data on: Attendance rates School completion rates Disciplinary referrals Suspensions and expulsions Enrollment in GATE Student achievement as measured by standardized tests.

281 290 The Unfinished Journey For secondary schools we also wanted to know: Graduation rates Enrollment in A-F courses College going rates Official drop out rates. It was a rare school that had all of this data in subaggregated form readily available. Some clerical staff offered to take the time to sit down and try to generate such data. Some administrators tried to pull together what might be available from various reports to the district and state that they had been required to make. Most were unsure of what data they had or where to find it. Moreover, many seemed taken aback that we were interested in this data. In a few schools, we were told quite bluntly that it was none of our business. Overall, however, we found that the subaggregated data which would allow schools to monitor and assess the progress of groups of students either 1) is not being collected at all, 2) is being collected and reported when required but isn't being reviewed or used at the school site to shape programmatic reforms, or 3) is being reviewed by a small administrative group but not shared with committees or other design/implementation groups. Only three schools in the entire study focused on issues of differential experiences and comparative achievement of students of different language, cultural or ethnic/racial groups. Furthermore, while we sought data on outcomes specific to school linked services in certain applicable schools, the information (when it existed) on services and outcomes relevant to those programs was never in the same place as the school achievement and participation data. The information was collected by different people, and used in wholly different contexts.

The Fear of Sub-Aggregated Data While some schools were looking at overall student achievement data, and seemed in some cases to be able to cite improvements, this was not the case with sub-aggregated data. In many districts and school sites, there is an overall atmosphere of fear about collecting and making visible sub-aggregated data. As a participant in one of our retreats stated in response to hearing our findings about this issue: "Let's face it. We're paranoid in schools. Data is used all the time to club us over our heads. There's very little sense that data can be useful to us in doing what we're trying to do. It feels like something that is used by other people to beat us up. We don't trust that the measures have any relationship to reality. We don't trust the people who ask us to collect the information. We're never consulted about how things are going or how we might measure the job we do. You come into my school and ask for that kind of data, and it puts you on the other side of the line an enemy. Because that's what our experience has been!" The political atmosphere in communities and in districts has been in many cases one of fingerpointing and blame. For too long, communities frustrated about exclusion have felt their only power is throug."1 documenting and publicizing inequities and using the courts (or thats of 282 Reflective School Communities and New Accountability: Keys to a Reformed School System 291 lawsuits) to be heard. For too long, educators have felt unappreciated, blamed for problems that are rooted far beyond the school walls. Within districts, too often teachers have felt unfairly blamed by central district offices for inequities in student achievementand central office administrators have felt frustrated and angry at what they feel is a lack of performance on the parts of teachers. In this context, data on student achievement overalland the more explosive data on the achievement gaps between raciaUethnic groupsis felt as a weapon as opposed to a tool. Sometimes, not asking the question'which students are being helped or not helped?'feels like a protection. Reaction to the issue of sub-aggregated data depends partly on 'who wants to know'. A combination of defensiveness, discomfort with facing issues of racism, and distrust of people outside of schools using data "to club us" combine in many cases to build a wall protecting teachers from critical "outside" information. In one school, national testing data was presented to a faculty meeting by a representative of the Educational Testing Service. The data, subaggregated by ethnicity, indicated that Latinos were doing worse than other students at the school. The faculty were so offended and angered by this presentation, which they felt was presented in a way that blamed them, that the data itself was simply thrown aside. In several schools, school staff admitted to us that they knew it was their Latino students who were dropping out in great numbers, but they resisted collecting the data because then everyone would know. There was a sense of keeping a secret, and protecting the school. "If we kept that kind of information, somehow it would leak out. And then people would start getting on us. Why aren't you don't anything for the Hispanics? We just don't need that kind of bad press right now. Teacher morale is low enough." Or, as one woman admitted: "Not collecting data is a form of denial." The defensiveness is not just on the parts of teachers who are uncomfortable acknowledging that students from various linguistic, cultural or racial groups faced differential school experiences. It also comes from teachers of color well aware of racism who feel protective of their students, themselves, their people. "We're so used to that kind of data being used against us. If African Americans are scoring at the bottom, we might look at it ourselves and say, `Hmm, something's wrong here in what's going on for these kids at school, guess we need to make some changes.' But in the hands of someone else, that same test data can be turned against us and used to argue that African Ameri- cans are just intellectually inferior, or it's our culture, or it's our parenting. See what I mean? Data isn't just data pure and simple. It gets interpreted. It gets used. That's why the trust issue is such an underlying tension everytime someone talks about looking at the African American kids separate from the Latinos separate from the white kids." In some cases, where there have been significant tensions in a community over race relations, the school administrators decide not to focus on issues of "who is getting served". One Principal said:

292 2S The Unfinished Journey "We absolutely do not look at data by language or race. We want all kids to be moving forward, and we don't want anything that would encourage dividing them. The district does that kind of thing too much. The new report on suspensions is almost offensive that way. We serve kids. All kids. Period." Generally, it is the district office or the state or the federal government that "wants to know." And, because academic achievement is the major articulated mission of the public schools, and equity a responsibility of government to enforce, schools are required to document some aspects of student achievement by subaggregated groups. But beyond reporting, which is generally handled by a single administrator, the data is not being fed back into the school restructuring process as essential information for planning and assessment. The result has been that restructuring schools have neither been able to pinpoint areas of needed changes with regards to equity and targeted instruction, nor able to demonstrate their progress and success. Colorblindness and fear of controversy and conflict also contribute towards not asking questions about specific groups of students. In some cases, it appeared that there was simply no consciousness that the kind of data we were seeking might be useful or necessary. This appeared to coincide with schools with a strong colorblind ethic and a lack of overall dialogue about issues of language, culture and race in the lives of students. Echoing themes discussed more fully in the chapter "Creating an Inclusive Dialogue," we heard repeated comments such as the following from teachers and administrators alike at these schools: I "We don't keep that kind of data, we just see all kids the same." and "Good education works for all kids. We need to know the over- allis this working for our school or not? So we don't need subaggregated data, and it is just divisive. We'd know if it wasn't working."

The Need for Skills and Formats for Reflecting Upon Data Schools gather the data that they are mandated to collect to meet district, state or federal requirements. Traditionally, authority and decision making have rested at the district office level, and the responsibility to monitor compliance at the state or federal level. As a result, the evaluation data requested by those bodies are related to overall assessment of a system, but seldom inthe detailed, individualized form that might make the data more useful to classroom teachers or individual school sites. The need for the data has been determined elsewhere than the school siteand the use of the data occurs elsewhere as well. As a result, school sites comply with collecting the data, but once it is submitted it is never 284 Reflective School Communities and New Accountability: Keys to a Reformed School System 293 again consulted. One school showed us binders of data in the front office, but acknowledged that with the exception of one administrator The pervasive feeling who is a kind of "data junkie", no one has any idea what it says. The pervasive feeling is that data collection is burdensome and imposed from is that data collection outside. Site based management has not really changed that general attitude towards data. is burdensome and The problem is not just attitude, however. Few teachers have any prior experience or skills -in -designing data systems that might speak to imposed from outside. the needs of their site and their practice. Few know how to read data printouts or interpret the findings. Without those skills, it is unlikely that Site based management restructuring schools will be able to play a role in shaping student information systems which really speak to their own reflective practice. has not really changed We did find a few schools, however, that in the course of their restructuring effort are beginning to define some new uses of their own that general attitude for data. Many of the teachers at Artesia High School, for example, have computerized their student grades and skills achievement information. towards data. These teachers regularly update the files in terms of how many assignments each student has turned in, grades they have received on exams 99 and scores on papers. Teachers regularly post this information- grades and assignments completed. In this way students have easy access to current information on how well they're doing. This was made possible, however, because some of the teachers in the school have pursued advanced degrees in computer sciences and are bringing that knowledge to bear upon the school's data needs. At another case study school, a member of the Management Team described the beginnings of discovering and defining their needs for documentation and the use of student data: "We're learning so much here. But one of the problems is that we haven't documented our changes. Now we're trying to keep a learning log at Management Team meetings to try to document the process. We try to step back and look at ourselves when we do presentations, but we get lost in the day to day process of working on changes, and don't often have a sense of the bigger picture. We need to create ways to see where we have been, and how we have moved."

The Search for Alternative Assessment Some of the resistance to data overall is coming from the distrust of the standardized measures often used to determine student achievement. In fact, one of the major focuses of restructuring efforts has been to try to create and implement alternative and more "authentic" forms of student assessment, and to free schools from the burden and misrepresenta- tion of standardized achievement tests. Many teachers involved in this quest spoke of feeling that standardized tests are biased and not accurate measurements of student progress. And, they feel they do not adequately measure the specific curriculum reforms being instituted. Knowing how students are doing requires meaningful measurement tools. Despite the fact that many of the schools in our study declared their lack of trust in norm-referenced and standardized test scores, they continue to use them as the primary measure of student achievement

294 9 The Unfinished journey because of the state and national system in which they function. It is, however, with much grumbling. And, not without good cause. As the National Coalition of Advocates for Students wrote in The Good Common School: "One of the most problematic results of recent [national] school reform is an increased reliance on inflexible measures of student academic achievement. The drive for accountability has further rigidified public schools at precisely the time when shifting student demographics requires greater flexibility. Children perceived as 'different' by virtue of their race, language, culture or economic class are not well served by narrow assessment methods that heighten existing inequities while providing very little information actually useful for improving individual instruction." Traditional standardized tests are particularly inappropriate measures of academic achievement for the more than one million California school children who are not proficient in English, particularly when the tests are only administered in English. Furthermore, the standardized tests contain many inherent cultural and national biases. Thus, for example, California is heavily investing in a major new state assessment instrument, the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS), but has put only a very small portion of the resources towards developing tests for LEP students. To move away from standardized testing, we found the restructuring movement is seriously tackling the problem of authentic assessment. They are developing systems of teacher observations and notes, student portfolios, checklists and inventories related to the specific goals and objectives of the curriculum, student self-assessments, and student pro- ductions as demonstrations of application of learning. More than one third of the schools in our study had committees dedicated to alternative assessment. While most schools continue to use standardized achievement tests as required, in the best cases they employ a variety of assessment strategies to document each child's progress towards mastery of specified educational goals during the school year. The new forms schools are creating are very useful in gauging individual student improvement and weaknesses (where language and cultural differences between teacher and student don't intervene). But they are not so easily aggregated in ways that might be useful to evaluate how whole or sub groups of students are doing across the school program. One unusual school in our sample, attempting to resolve this problem, has developed a scoring system for their students' portfolios so that each student's portfolio of work can be categorized as either reaching or not reaching the "standard". The school can then aggregate in various ways to determine how the program is benefitting students of different ethnic/racial groups and all students. Another school, heavily invested in a whole language and bilingual approach, decided to develop their own skills checklist for assessment as an alternative to a district skills checklist which was based on a basal reading program. It took a mounted offense against the district to get permission to use it instead of the mandated checklist for accountability.

286 Reflective School Communities and New Accountability: Keys to a Reformed School System 295 Ai At Oceana High School, student assessment is a major focus of restructuring. The school is focusing upon student products and demon- While significant strations, and relies as well upon student self-evaluations. Says Lois Jones, Principal: effort is going into "We want students to be involved in evaluation of their work, developing portfolio and in the evaluation of the courses and the program. Every student writes about the courses, and critiques their experiences in assessment and other them. Self evaluation is becoming more and more important for the staff. We put together a series of questions allowing staff to means of authentic reflect on their work. Teachers are also responding to student evaluations of coursework." assessment, the gap of A few schools arc also using portfolios as a means of program assessment. One example is Florin High School. The Monitoring and race, language and Assessment Committee was established when the faculty decided to use portfolio assessment for evaluating student writing because standardized culture between most tests weren't good measures of what their program was trying to teach. They wanted to design an approach that addresses reading comprehen- teachers and their sion and writing as related skills. They began by having students compile a writing folder in which they collect "quick writes," and essays and students is resulting in research papers. At the end of the semester, a team of teachers looks at the portfolios to try to assess student progress, and looks also at how severe barriers to students did on the California Assessment Program test essay. The major emphasis was not individual student assessment, but assessment of their creating meaningful teaching program. Explains Laura Watson, one of the teachers: and useful approaches. "We decided thar the kids weren't adequately editing, and that their final papers weren't really finished. So the next year we began to do editing workshops for the students. We had also discovered that they were weak on cause and effect. So this year we are doing an inservice for the teachers on teaching cause and effect writing." While significant effort is going into developing portfolio assessment and other means of authentic assessment, the gap of race, language and culture between most teachers and their students is resulting in severe barriers to creating meaningful and useful approaches. Authentic assessment provides an opportunity to develop measures that are more accurate and useful at capturing individual achievement, strengths and weaknesses than standardized achievement test scores. There is enormous potential for contextualizing what "achievement" means within the life of each student. However, our concern in looking at restructuring schools was that those who are involved in the dc zelopment of these systems are without the knowledge of second language acquisition or of cultural learning issues that greatly affect skills development and learning. The same ignorance or blindness found with regards to teaching language minority students in many schools, we also found in the application of assessment reforms. In one school, we met with an active Authentic Assessment Committee which had devoted a great deal of time to faculty training and discussion about implementation. The faculty were enthusiastic about how it was working. When we asked if the ESL students also did portfolios, there was a pause. The answer came:

296 The Unfinished Journey "We're not sure. They're really the responsibility of the ESL department. We don't know if they are doing portfolios over there or not." Assessment is an area In the schools in our sample with a strong commitment to bilingual requiring major programs, and staffs that speak the languages of the students, the problem is not language barriers. But the lack of availability of appropriate research, development testing materials is still a problem. Many of these teachers are embracing authentic assessment approaches because of the flexiblity and broader set and attention. The field of indicators they can consider. However, one persistent problem remains. There is a lack of appropriate tests for immersion or dual lan- does not yet have guage programs that can measure attainment and skill in bilingualism (the flexibility arid skills that arise from having two languages). These available the state of programs, then, have to fall back on separate single language tests to measure the separate skills and proficiency in each of two different lan- the art in assessment guages. But the fullness of bilingualism, a significant and important goal, remains unmeasured. (particularly regarding Assessment is an area requiring major research, development and attention. The field does not yet have available the state of the art in language and culture assessment (particularly regarding language and culture and bilingualism) which will be necessary to hold our schools accountable and to and bilingualism) which measure the benefits which are resulting from this reform movement. will be necessary to School Linked Services: More Data Conscious hold our schools The school linked services aspects of restructuring benefit from their involvement with agencies in the collaborative services movement. A accountable and to major strategy employed in those reforms has been both data matches and the drive for hard indicators of children's well-being. One school in measure the benefits our case study sample, Carr Intermediate in Santa Ana, is part of Santa Ana 2000, a collabdrative services coalition. As part of its involvement which are resulting in this coalition, the district has initiated a longitudinal study following 4,000 students to develop standardized measures of their performance from this reform and achievement, and to document the history of programs and services offered to students. Similarly, O'Farrell Middle School in San Diego, movement. designed in partnership with public agencies to promote school-linked services, has a HyperCard system linking the Family Support Services Center and the school. The system is both designed to measure things such as referrals and parent contacts, as well as student academic achievement. A research committee with both school and district participants was established with Stuart Foundation funds as part of designing this system, as well as a longitudinal study following the students into high school. While the school linked services field has made headway in developing data systems and increasing capacity to collect data, there are not yet sufficient mechanisms or emphasis on cycling that data into a process of reflection on programs and practice. And, this field too is struggling with defining what might be measures of meaningful impacts and outcomes, as compared to just counting service inputs. This is the challenge currently confronting the human services reform movementand their creative thinking may well be fertile ground for exploration by those in education reform who are also grappling with these issues. 288 Reflective School Communities and New Accountability: Keys to a Reformed School System 297 Knitting Together Reflection and Accountability: What Will it Take? There is an apparent dawning awareness that data may be needed for external accountability. In an era of grantseeking and competition for increasingly scarce state, federal, private foundation and corporate funds, schools are being asked to demonstrate the impact of their efforts. They are beginning to see that documentation, therefore, plays an enabling role when arguing for a program or a reform. It can be useful in winning over those who are cynical about the reforms, or convincing districts to grant more autonomy to school sites. These are the motivations we heard in a number of schools that have begun to be concerned with some form of accountability. In an era of declining faith in schools, schools need to demonstrate impact. I "The staff has been under tremendous pressure, and we are being watched. There are those who would like to see us go belly up. We are in the process of making many changes in our educational program but not one of us is yet satisfied with our work. The staff has a strong seise of the work being an ongoing process but the pressure is that eyes are on us. We have created our program; we've made choices. If it fails, it is a part of us that has failed." Lois Jones, Principal, Oceana High School One of the most hopeful aspects of the restructuring movement is that schools engaged in the process are by and large both open to reflection about their work, and committed to improvement in their programs. This is a strong basis for building new systems of data collection, reflection and accountability. Only a few schools are, however, there yet in terms of implementing this vision. Wilson Middle School, in San Diego is an example of one. Explained the Principal at the time: "The only way to really look at issues of diversity is grounded in data. And in fact, our success has started to show up in that we are no longer suspending Black males in the proportions we used to. But this came about when I presented the data to the staff back then, and there it wasclearly--a problem to be addressed. We also look at our unexcused absence rates. We finally got rid o; our holding room, and that was a major step forward. Also, the nine team leaders have extra preps to go into classrooms, to help out, to counsel kids, to call parents. The teachers feel supported now, so behavior problems don't need to be solved by booting the kids out. Assertive discipline is important too, and it took us years to do it. But we went from a thousand suspensions to almost none. And it was the data that alerted us to the problem, and the data that shows us we have made progress." This example demonstrates a practice/feedback loopa hard look at student data that prompted a schoolwide reflection on practice, and then eventual changes in the school. However, the field appears still far from incorporating into that process data about student achievement and participation, and the subaggregated data which might inform schools of how different groups of student: are being affected by the reforms. Yet, given a history of exclusion and ill service to students of racial and linguistic minorities, and given the tremendous complexities of designing a

298 2S9 The Unfinished Journey schooling system that works for a rich diversity of students, such information is absolutely vital. What might be the general characteristics of a public school support system that fosters reflection and builds in accountability? It would: Develop the skills and capacity of school site personnel, human services personnel involved in school linked services, and student advocates to work together in designing, collecting, interpreting and reflecting upon data on student participation and outcomes; Provide resources, support and local site flexibility in designing these systems; Insist upon accountability for both excellent preparation of all students for part:-:ipation in a diverse and complex society, and for ending the achievement gaps between groups; And, it would provide for both carrots and sticks so there is conse- quence for progress or lack of it. This will require new levels and new forms of policies and supports. Centralized as well as site based accountability systems are needed. This will involve re-configuring what has been a fragmented, outside-inside, top-down accountability system. District offices need to both demonstrate leadership and district wide accountability, and recognize the importance and validity of school site developed accountability systemsas long as those systems are developed through an inclusive process with parents, community advocates, teachers, agency staff, and other concerned individuals. Sitebased evaluation systemsrequirethe involvement and participation of all segments of a school community. It is only through such input, dialogue and participation that the accountability goals, indicators and mechanisms will be appropriate, useful and actually utilized. The process of designing new forms of accountability must take place in an atmosphere of respect and safety, free from the threats of retribution, humiliation and blame. This requires skilled facilitation to create the safe opportunity for inclusive dialogue, including input from people with the particular expertise related to developing data and information systems. Discussion about accountability for school- linked services reform and for education reform must occur in one forum. If not, disjointed and inconsistent new layers will be created in the name of accountability, and the non-holistic view of children, youth and families will be perpetuated. There are some standard equity and participation measures which a civil rights perspective and tradition have relied upon to monitor exclusion/inclusion in educational programs. Local civil rights advocacy organizations in the communities where students live should be invited specifically 290 Reflective School Communities and New Accountability: Keys to a Reformed School System 299 to be part of the dialogue about accountability and the design of a system. This will ensure that the knowledge and expertise gained from years of such experience is made available to school sites. "Data" should be viewed in its broadest sense. The most effective system would include the creation of environments where teachers are researchers, able to design projects to answer their own generated questions, with research consultants available to help them design their own forms of reflective research. Similarly, students should be engaged in studying their own learning, their educational context, and their communities. Thus, the entire school community would view the design, generation and analysis of data as part of the process of teaching and learning. School community members should be encouraged to think creatively about the measures that might tell the most about what they care about. Indeed, when asked by California Tomorrow staff, teachers at many of the schools we studied had ideas for what might be meaningful measures: "Right now the way things are, there is no real way to see whether restructuring is working. Assessment is pretty confined to regular testing. But I've thought that if we could develop a gauge of success that looks at student choices it would tell us a lot. Did they choose to take a more difficult college prep class? Did they elect to volunteer to work at a convalescent home? We need to look at the behavior and choices kids are making. That's the kind of assessment that can alert us to how we're doing. And it's how students make choices that really matter to us." Hal Stonbraker, teacher, Artesia High One teacher suggested tracking the number of students referred to the front office for disciplinary reasons. Yet another thought of counting the number of parent-teacher conferences. Arlene Graham, then Princi- pal of Hawthorne Elementary School in Oakland talks about meaningful measures at her school: "I get feedback regularly from my faculty on forms they give me every 8 weeks about what they've taught, what they are most proud of, what levels of writing their classes are doing, how many kids are using conflict resolution. The conflict resolution part is really special to Hawthorne. That's important here." Schools must have available to them both assistance and professional development opportunities in research design, data collection methods, and the interpretation of various forms of data. The schools which were farthest along in implementing new forms of assessment were hooked into resources and projects which supported the development of a school site capacity. Florin High School in Sacramento, for example, has worked with the CRESS Center at the University of California at Davis, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Washington. With few exceptions, schools appear to be receiving very little support currently from district research offices, from their university and other project connections in how to design evaluative and monitoring data systems, and use data in informing their restructuring efforts. With- out such support, schools generally do not have the expertise to incorporate data and accountability mechanisms. We recommend that the restructuring movement infrastructure of projects, university faculty,

300 291 The Unfinished Journey county offices and others ensure the availability of resources and consultants to help with developing appropriate site level data systems. This is a time of growth, of experimentation, of bold steps forward. The design, collection, interpretation and discussion of data requires time as well as skills. Therefore, schools need to deliberately schedule such time, and formally establish forums for interpreting and discussing the implications of data. This also requires clear leadership. The dialogue about accountability should work to solicit the very different perspectives and goals for education that may be found in a diverse community. This focus must be made explicit by state, district and local site leadership. At the federal, state and local levels, providing maximum site flexibility must not result in losing a focus on equity or the dismantling of those protections that do exist. It is precisely at this time that we must be most vigilant and clear about what our public school system seeks and our society expects. There is clearly much research to be done. Though some tools exist to measure some of the kinds of information discussed above, many of the concerns covered in this report (such as parent influence on school practice; the sensitivity of the staff to cultural differences; student relations across racial groups; etc.) do not have ways of being measured yet. Furthermore, any meaningful assessment must allow for students to be assessed in their strongest language. This will require not only the assessment staff who can speak the languages of the students, but development of new assessment tools in the languages of students that begin to measure the skills of bilingualism and biculturalism. Overall, there needs to be a commitment to keep data a focus of attention in the ongoing restructuring process.

292

Reflective School Communities and New Accountability: Keys to a Reformed School System 301 One Component of an Accountability System: A Student Data and Information System Designed for Aggregation

1. Student Information A. Demographic Data: age, gender, race/ethnicity, economic status (e.g, eligibility for free lunch), special education classification, LEP/FEP/EO status, strongest language, B. Academic Status Data: Track placement/ability level classification overall and by subject if relevant at secondary; static grouping configuration by ability level at elementary Grade level placement Enrollment in. GATE Programs For secondary students, add the following: Grade point average overall and by core subjects Number of courses taken overall and by core subjectcoded by whether specially designed instruction for LEP Number of courses enrolled in Number of advanced courses (or credits) taken overall and by subject Completion of "A-F" course requirements Graduation Rates Postsecondary followup (four year college; two year college; trade or vocational schools; no further schooling) C. Achievement Assessment Data: (note whether students tested in strongest language) Standardized test scores Minimum competency test scores Other routinely given tests Other routinely conducted assessments a. analysis of writing samples b. analysis of interpersonal-communication skills c. analysis of group participation abilities d. analysis of creative/divergent thinking abilities e. analysis of learning potential Quality and quantity of books read (log) Assessment of bilingualism D. Partidpatiort/Behavior Data: Absenteeism Extracurricular activities Honors and awards Tardiness/promptness Suspensions Expulsions Disciplinary referrals Community service

293 .302 01 dirt &RUBLE The Unfinished Journey II. Parent Information A. Demographic Data: family income, race/ethnicity, number of years have had a child in the school, strongest language B. School-Family Relations: Frequency of telephone contact with school Frequency of visits to school Reception of school to initiated contacts involvement in classroom Involvement in school wide activities Parent satisfaction- through surveys, interviews, focus groups

III.Teacher Information A. Demographic Data: Sex, race/ethnicity, fluent languages, years teaching, years teaching at this school, highest academic credential held, specialty certificates or credentials, most active areas of professional development

IV.Class Level Information A. Teacher Information and aggregated student information on a per class basis B. Class Characteristics: tracking designation if applicable Language(s) of instruction Number of students Racial/ethnic composition Language composition Gender composition

V. School Level Information A. Aggregated student, teacher and class information on a per school basis (overall and categorized by grade level, department, team)for all variables (e.g., attendance, suspensions, etc.) B. Measures of student intergroup relation: in class, during student free time (recess, lunch, etc.), in after school activities C. Human and Material Resources Number of certificated staff by type Total instruction FTE (overall and by class type) Teacher-student ratios (overall and by class type) Instructional dollars per pupil Special grants and funding

Adapted from: John L. Goodlad and Pamela Keating, ed. Access to Knowledge: An Agenda for Our Nation's Schools. College Entrance Examination Board, New York. 1990.

UST CRYMILANI 294 Reflective School Communities and Neu, Accountability: Keys to a Reformed School System .303 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Introduction

We face a massive challenge in this country to create a diverse society predicated on principles of full participation. Failure to do so has an unthinkable price in lost human potential, lost productivity, widened divisions between the have's and have-not's, and conflict between racial, cultural and language groups. We are faced with an imperative that is both rooted in practicality and in human morality. In this task, the public schools play a central role. Creating schools that are equitable and appropriate for the richly diverse population of California requires fundamental changes in the structures and practices of public education. The school restructuring movement offers us an opportunity to engage in the fundamental rethinking of schools, and to begin the exciting task of putting such schools into place. Those schools that are using restructuring as an opportunity to become truly responsive to the diversity of our society must be supported with the resources and policy conditions to move faster and implement their visions. And, a second generation of restructuring schools must be encouraged to begin work with the benefit of the lessons learned by the pioneer schools that are addressing the challenges of diversity. California Tomorrow's research documented seventy-three schools grappling with these challenges. Our findings sound a wake-up call for the policies, supports and involvement that can deliver the promise of restructuring.

304 295 The Unfinished Journey PART ONE-CONCLUSIONS Creating schools I. School restructuring is an energetic, hopeful movement that is resulting in an increased focus by educators upon teaching and learning. that are equitable Most of the schools in this study reported broader involvement of teachers, parents and others in setting a whole school vision, excitement about and appropriate for possibilities for change, and higher levels of commitment to professional development and reflection on research. The schools studied tended to be the richly diverse optimistic sites where teachers were volunteering many extra hours because of a belief that change was possible. Restructuring appears to be population of a real movement for change. California requires II. The impact of the restructuring movement depends upon building the understanding and knowledge base of teachers in how issues of race, fundamental changes language and culture figure in the lives and schooling of their students. There is still an alarming widespread lack of awareness and expertise on in the structures and these issues. In the majority of schools in this research, restructuring reforms were failing to address the needs of racial, linguistic and cultural practices of public minority students. Some schools were perpetuating practices that are out of compliance with law or were eroding programs designed to meet the education. needs of their minority students. This appeared to be occurring primarily out of ignorance about basic principles of second language acquisition and development, and about the role of cultural background and race in the lives and schooling of students. The critical shortage of bilingual teachers and of teachers from the cultures and communities of the students, the lack of professional development in these areas, and the lack of expertise about the cultures and backgrounds of the diverse students are major barriers to effective restructuring reforms. III. The promise of the restructuring movement to make schools better for all diverse students is dependent upon building broadly inclusive processes. However, often missing from the table are the voices of those people most connected to the communities of the students. In most restructuring schools, the dialogue has widened to involve a broad group of committed teachers in shaping the whole school vision and reform plan. But parents, community members, instructional aides and other support staff have not yet been a meaningful part of the change process in most schools. IV. The involvement of parents and caregivers, while oftentimes a goal of restructuring schools, remains one of the most problematic aspects of reform efforts. The majority of schools desire more parent involvement than they have been able to realize. Few schools had an active parent body that represented the linguistic, cultural and racial composition of the students. Vary- ing perspectives on how, why and which parents should be involved commonly created underlying tension in restructuring. Where the school staff do not share the backgrounds or community lives of their students, the missing presence of parents impedes the creation of appropriate reforms and programs. Yet few schools recognized this, nor did they have the supports or mechanisms that might facilitate such involvement. For the most part, these barriers are not being addressed in restructuring schools. 296 Conclusions and Recommendations 305 V. Restructuring demands new roles, skills and resources for teachers, administrators, parents and others in order to create whole school change, and to ensure a focus upon diversity. Facilitation, planning, mediation, management, curriculum develop- mentthese are just some of the skills demanded by restructuring. The skills for change require strong support and professional development to which most restructuring schools do not have access. The ability of schools to obtain such professional development for the participants in restructuring is greatly dependent on the presence or absence of a strong infrastructure of training and technical assistance in each locale, and the individual success of schools in negotiating with their districts for the time and resources to utilize these opportunities. Teachers roles are particularly changing in restructuring schools, and their expertise, energy and involvement are key. Currently, reform is being primarily sustained by voluntary time off the backs of teachers. This is not sustainable. Those schools we found making significant changes while attempting to lift some of the burden off teachers were utilizing many special resources including supplementary funding, materials, travel and training. Most essential was the ability to pay for time for planning and the other work of restructuring, so as to prevent burn-out and bitterness. VI. A new, but fragmented, infrastructure of professional development and technical assistance support is being created to address the needs of restructuring schools. This infrastructure must be broadened and strengthened to Illeet the need. And, it must build its own capacity for helping school sites address issues of equity and diversity. Restructuring schools are increasingly relying upon the coaching, professional development and technical assistance support of universities, County Offices of Education, and reform projects. The existence of this infrastructure of support is essential, but must be greatly strengthened. The lack of a coordinated, comprehensive and high priority policy focus upon strengthening this infrastructure and making these resources available is a major barrier facing schools. Without them, schools cannot develop the capacity for reform in general, or for addressing the needs of diverse students specifically. While the state reform initiatives (1274, 620, 1882, 1470) are having a powerful impact on the field, each has been generated from a separate set of concerns and legislative interests. While each is an important catalyst of reform, in practice school sites are implementing them as separate initiatives, resulting in a fragmentation of efforts. And, few support a focus on issues of language, culture, race, access and equity that schools urgently need. VII. To address the basic health and mental health needs of children which affect their participation in school, some schools are building new partnerships with human services agencies. The promise of restructuring to meet diverse children's needs is dependent upon such partnerships. A relatively small number of schools in our sample were engaged in designing school linked services in partnership with community based organizations and public health and human service agencies. These efforts are being supported through foundation and state grants encouraging such collaboration. They are, however, facing numerous challenges in working across disciplines, agency cultures, bureaucracies, and funding streams.

306 The Unfinished Journey VIII. Reform efforts are hampered by inadequate and unstable funding and staffing. In many schools, restructuring is about trying to do more with less. Teachers are putting in more hours while accepting pay cuts. Schools are trying to personalize instruction despite increasing class sizes. Districts and schools grappling with unstable and inadequate funding use additional resources from foundations and special grants for restructuring. The reform efforts of those without any special funding are suffering. A climate of competition between schools for scarce additional resources interferes with any potential for system-wide change. IX. Private foundations and public demonstration projects are playing a crucial role in shaping the reform thrust in the field. They are, however, largely missing the opportunity to encourage a focus in restructuring schools upon equity for diverse students. As the basic funding for schools is eroded, and as schools recognize the necessity of additional funding to support their change efforts, they are increasingly turning to private foundations for support. Funding for demonstration projects, for networking and conferences, sand for technical assistance and coaching relationships has fueled the restructuring movement. These funding sources powerfully impact the content and direction chosen by schools in their reforms. Thus, we found restructuring schools strongly focusing on innovative uses of technology, developing schools in line with state curriculum frameworks and reform reports, and collaborative services. There is, however, very little support for equity-related change activitiessuch as innovative LEP programs, immigrant education, Afrucentric approaches, intergroup relations and school climate, or multicultural curriculum. Without financial resources, schools are finding it difficult to focus on an equity agenda within their restructuring. X. One of the most hopeful aspects of the restructuring movement is that schools more than ever reflect on their practice and strive to improve their programs. While concern about student outcomes is present in most restructuring schools, very few review sub-aggregated student data or consider the experiences of groups of students of differing cultures, languages and races. Schools are failing to consider information that will help them plan appropriate programs or assess the effectiveness of their reforms for different subgroups of students. Only sub-aggregated data can inform teachers of the gaps in learning that need to be addressed and whether their new approaches are closing the gaps. Our findings documented both a widespread blindness to the need for such mechanisms, and a lack of attention and resources devoted to developing such capacity. We documented a resulting continuation of past practices or implementation of new practices which are contrary to the research literature and in some cases, legal compliance with regards to effective programs for racial, cultural and linguistic minority students. With a few exceptions, schools appear to be receiving very little support from district research offices, from their university partnership connections or other sources in how to design evaluative and monitoring data systems, or how to use data in informing their restructuring efforts. Without such support, schools generally do not have the expertise to incorporate data/accountability mechanisms.

Conclusions and Recommendations 298 307 XI. The school restructuring movement is generally committed to basing reforms on the research on teaching and learning. Few, however, are specifically informed by research about appropriate schooling for the particular student populations and communities that individual schools serve. Restructuring schools are, in most cases, knowledge hungry. However, there is a gap between the research that has been generated from the advocacy and research sector specifically about diversity, equity and access, and the research generated from a mainstream school reform field. In too many cases, generic mainstream school reform literature does not speak to the specific needs of cultural, linguistic and racial minority students. Communication and collaboration between hese two arenas of the educational reform field are essential. XII.System-wide reform may not be realized unless there are district and state policy mechanisms to build beyond a first generation of restructuring schools. The vast majority of schools in California are simply outside of the reform movement altogether. A policy assumption behind restructuring has been that a first generation of restructuring schools might provide some models and inspire others to follow suit. The emphasis has been, then, on spawning a first generation of schools. The link between this first rung strategy and actually achieving overall school system reform is weak. Indeed, many of the schools which have more recently embarked on restructuring have relied on visits to other schools further along in the process. But our findings raise serious concerns about how the present voluntary individual school site change will impact upon the overall school system. We are particularly concerned about common practices we observed in school after school, in district after districtthe scramble for th: resources necessary in order to engage in meaningful restructuring, and the concentration of those resources in a few schools. Expertise is developing in the field but there are few mechanisms to capture or disseminate that learning. As less and less money appears available to support new restructuring efforts, the problem of how to support new generations of restructuring schools is very great.

308 9Q0 The Unfinished Journey PART TWO-RECOMMENDATIONS

The task of restructuring schools to be appropriate for a diverse society is enormous. It cannot be done by schools alone. Each of us has a role to play. To work collaboratively toward this goal at the state, county, school-site and community levels, we recommend:

A. THAT THE STATE LEGISLATURE: 1. Fund a second round of SB 1274 demonstration sites to allow a new generation of schools to enter the process. This second round must strategically focus on schools that center their reform efforts around working for equitable education for racially, culturally and linguistically diverse students. 2. Continue funding for the technical assistance components of SB 1274 and SB 620, and also fund efforts to strengthen and coordinate their capacity to infuse an understanding of racial, cultural and linguistic diversity into the field. 3. PaFc a strong, comprehensive child-supportive state budget that recognizes the inextricable connection between basic health and human support for children and their families, and support for education. The Legislature should request the Office of the Leg- islative Analyst and the Department of Finance to analyze the potential impact of any proposed budget cuts in one sector upon the demand for services from other public institutions that work with the same population of children and families. To address the complexity of needs of students requires a support infrastructure of services for children and families. This depends upon agencies with the capacity to respond to their needs. In the past decade in California, there has been a dangerous competition over scarce funds between schools and human services for children and families. 4. Support and encourage innovative efforts such as AB 1741 which allows experimentation with more flexible use of funds across categorical boundaries. Such efforts, however, must be required to examine how well they are meeting the needs of different racial and language groups and be held accountable for working towards equitable outcomes, based on disaggregated data. Without such data, experimentation should not take place. 5. Create and fund a major five-year professional development campaign with the goal of supporting mainstream teachers and administrators to develop the expertise needed to teach in a diverse society. These skills include: knowledge of second language acquisition processes and supports for students through that process; familiarity with a wide range of materials about different cultures and historical periods to enable teachers to build inclusive curricula; approaches to creating a climate supportive of diversity; exposure to the major cultures aid national backgrounds of the student population of California; and strategies for working in partnership with other children and family agencies. Conclusions and Recommendations 300 309 6. Establish an interdisciplinary task force to assess professional development opportunities for human services staff working with diverse families and develop a plan for ensuring all such staff receive adequate pre-service and in-service professional development opportunities. These opportunities must help them learn skills for building on the strengths of families, adapting services to respond to the cultures and languages of families, improving access to services for cultural and linguistic minorities, working in interdisciplinary teams, and using data to inform practice. The training assessment must analyze the current level of available resources across departments and develop a plan for ensuring such opportunities could be made a part of the staff development of all human service providers. This legislation should build upon AB 1763 which called for a similar assessment but was vetoed in 1992 and carried over in committee for consideration in 1994. 7. Establish an interagency task force to investigate the extent to which credentialling policies and practices pose barriers to hiring and involvement of staff with knowledge and expertise of diverse children and families. Often parents or employees of community- based organizations have tremendous understanding and skills in working with children and families from their communities. However, because they may lack the appropriate credentials, schools and school-linked services projects may be prevented from hiring them or assigning them to particular responsibilities in restructuring. This task force should investigate these barriers and recommend remedies in polices and regulations. 8. Invest in the development of a data-driven accountability system that builds upon existing data and management information systems and holds schools accountable for both high level standards and equitable student achievement and participation. The accountability system must promote self-examination of subaggregated data at the school site level, and include three basic components: incentives for schools to improve their performance, technical assistance and professional development for schools engaged in good faith efforts but not sufficiently improving, and reasonable sanctions for those schools which ultimately fail to improve over prolonged periods of time. 9. Protect the cornerstone of our free and universal public schooling system by refusing to exclude any communities of students, including undocumented children. The role of public education to serve the public good will be eroded if some populations are marginalized and denied access to the skills and knowledge needed for full participation in the social, economic and political life of our state.

B. THAT THE CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: 1. Document the work of restructuring schools and make these new models and knowledge available to others through publications, videotapes, conferences and other dissemination mechanisms.

310 The Unfinished Journey `I 1 2. Coordinate the infrastructures of support for current state reform initiatives (SB 1274, SB 620, SB 1882 and AB 1470), the subject matter projects and state curriculum framework implementation. These must be complementary parts of an overall reform strategy, rather than separate initiatives in competition for funding with separate governance and financing structures. They must be mandated to emphasize equity and the development of strategies for educating diverse student populations. Each must have strong connections to the California Department of Education's offices of bilingual education, school climate, monitoring and compliance, desegregation and multicultural education. 3. Develop a statewide assessment system that includes appropriate measures for limited English proficient students. The disproportionately minuscule funding allocated for the California Learn- ing Assessment System to incorporate measurements for the achievement of California's almost I million (and growing) limited English proficient students should be appropriately increased. 4. Stop awarding reform and restructuring funds to school sites that do not obtain and use disaggregated data on the differential school experiences of their students by specific racial/ethnic groups, gender, and LEP status for program planning and evaluation. Schools that do not have the capacity to coilect and use such data but wish to should be given seed funds and training to create a meaningful data system. But without such data, no reform funding must proceed. 5. Stop funding reform efforts in schools that are out of legal compliance for serving their limited English proficient students, unless addressing that major gap is a central component of the school's reform effort.

C. THAT COUNTY COLLABORATIVES: 1. Work with local school districts to develop strategies for linking and coordinating human services reform with school restructuring efforts. 2. Develop strategies to ensure the participation of community based organizations with connections to racial, cultural and linguistic minority communities in the development of school linked services efforts. 3. Help coordinate, assess and improve professional development activities for educators and human service providers to learn to work in interdisciplinary teams and to understand appropriate practice with culturally and linguistically diverse families. 4. Provide sites with technical assistance on strategies for involving parents and families, for reaching out to community based organizations, and for information sharing in the school-linked service process.

302 Conclusions and Recommendations 311 D. THAT SCHOOL DISTRICTS AND SCHOOL BOARDS:

1.Build infrastructures supporting reform and ensuring a focus on issues of equity and diversity. Supports offered should include: A broad menu of professional development opportunities A clearinghouse of reform research, resources and models A central information base about reform efforts in the district Facilitation of networking among schools Coordination and hosting of site visits to restructuring schools for visitors from within and outside of the district Grant writing support Blame tree assistance in designing data systems for evaluating student participation and achievement Coordination of "coaches" and other facilitation assistance for schools Providing meeting and retreat facilities away from a school site for a school community to gather, talk and work Sponsorship of regular opportunities for cross-site support among restructuring schools, such as Principals' forums and content area focused groups Strong resource personnel and legal advice about the responsibility of schools to address the specific needs of special populations of students Assistance in creating strong partnerships between schools and human service providers 2. Develop a policy and process for involving an expanding circle of schools in restructuring, with an eye to system-wide reform. 3. Establish policies that support the stable tenure of principals in restructuring school sites, and allow for site based principal selection. Strong administrative leadership at the school site supportive of the arduous task of school change is critical. Districts must back schools' efforts to foster successful and stable new working relationships among principals, teachers and communities. 4. Enable non-citizen parents to vote in school board elections. Non-citizen immigrant parents in Chicago and New York have won this right for representation in the decisions about the education of their children. These parents can contribute a wealth of knowledge and support for schools seeking to become more responsive to diverse students. 5. Create time for the work of restructuring within the calendar and structure of the school year for those school sites which are restructuring, as well as find the extra funds necessary to pay for this time. Teachers and others must be paid for the many additional hours they are currently contributing as volunteers for systemic school change.

312 The Unfinished Journey ,1 6. Establish principles about how to allocate fiscal cuts when necessary so as to maintain an infrastructure to help schools fulfill their legal and educational responsibilities to special populations of students. It is all the more important that districts protect the educational rights and access of racial, linguistic and cultural minority students where capacity at the school site in this regards is still thin, where there are shortages of teachers with training in these areas, and where public and political ambiva- lence on these issues runs high over issues of diversity. Funds must be allocated for both resource people and legal advisors in this infrastructure. 7. Must not cut professional development resources. Building school personnel's capacity for change is required for meaningful school reform and for addressing issues of access and equity.

E. THAT DISTRICT LEVEL FORCES TOGETHERSCHOOL BOARDS, ADMINISTRATORS AND UNIONS: 1. Support measures that highly prioritize the recruitment, hiring and retention of teachers from the backgrounds and communities of the students. It must be a system-wide concern and effort to close the gap between the teaching force and the student population in languages, cultural and ethnic./racial backgrounds, and national experiences. 2. Negotiate expanded and more flexible job descriptions for teachers and administrators in restructuring schools that include more paid hours in the school year contract. 3. Create an extended base funding level for restructuring schools. An up to 10% extended pay and calendar should be created as individual sites see fit (for example, extended days, weeks or years). This funding must be continued for as long as a school can demonstrate that it is engaged in an inclusive, school-wide reform process that is both data connected and research driven. 4. Provide the vision and direction for school reforms to address issues of diversity and equity. Because it is often very difficult for educators and community members to engage in respectful and safe dialogue about these issues, such a dialogue and focus must be mirrored and modeled at the district leadership level.

F. THAT RESTRUCTURING SCHOOLS: 1. Develop mechanisms for school personnel to learn about who their students are, their prior schooling experiences and participation. This is particularly important where teachers do not share a language, culture or national or racial/ethnic background with those students. There are a wide range of ways to develop this knowledge including: student writing, student panels and student interviews; utilizing the expertise of district assessment personnel for insights into the immigrant population; community hearings and surveys, and many other strategies. 304 Conclusions and Recommendations 313 2. Highly prioritize professional development in areas related to language, culture and race. This is particularly important for schools that do not have credentialed bilingual or language development specialist teachers, or that do not have teachers from the communities of the students. The gaps of knowledge and training about the educational experiences and needs of racial, ethnic, cultural and linguistic minority students must be addressed. We recommend that such training be a prerequisite for at least a majority of the restructuring committee members in every school. 3. Study and reflect upon the research literature on the educational and social/cultural experiences of specific communities of students. School sites must be linked to the major professional associations and clearinghouses of research on issues of education for racial, cultural and linguistic minority children. (Lists of these and the important literature are included in the appendices of this report.) 4. Developprior to the adoption of new programs or initiatives a language impact assessment as to how potential language bani- ers will be addressed in the new reform plan. This is critical in schools with language minority parent populations and/or LEP/NEP student populations. To assist in this process, school sites must be able to draw upon the expertise and perspectives of community advocates, cultural liaisons, district and county consultants in bilingual education and English as a Second Language, as well as upon the members of their own school community. 5. Hire staff from the communities of the students whenever possible. 6. Adopt policies that ensure multiple perspectives at the formal governance and advisory levels. Formal places must be created in school governance systems for racial, linguistic and cultural minority parents and community advocates, as well as bilingual and ethnic minority instructional assistants. They must also ensure that the faculty with bilingual, ESL, multicultural and intergroup relations expertise are represented on the key committees of the school. 7. Make it a specific mandate to address the dimensions of culture, language, ethnicity and race within the mission of the school. School sites must devote time within the planning of their mission to define the role of the school in addressing issues of equity, access and diversity and the desired outcomes for students to live in a diverse society. 8. Seek multiple mechanisms to address students' academic support needs. These include: homework hot-lines, before and after school tutoring services, homework centers open after school and in the evening, computer systems for students to check on their progress, advisors, student advocates, an entire school community which believes, acts upon and reinforces the importance of every child's education so that children take school seriously and pursue what is expected of them at school.

314 305 The Unfinished Journey 9. Implement formal mechanisms to ensure the participation of the parents/family/caregivers of all studentsparticularly those whose communications with the school are across lines of ethnicity, culture, language and national background. To ensure this, parents needs in terms of transportation, location and timing must be accommodated to meet a variety of schedules. There must be school staff with the bilingual skills to be able to speak with parents and families in their home language. They must provide translation and mediation as well as interactions via telephone, face-to-face meetings and printed materials. 10. Train allstaff in cross-cultural communication to foster increased and effective two-way communications between the school and the home. Staff must brainstorm together about working with parents and create networks of cultural liaisons and culturally sensitive mediators. 11. Create mechanisms to facilitate and nurture relationships among different groups of parents. These mechanisms may include: workshops, cross community potlucks and social events, recruitment to ensure that school activities involve all sectors of the parent community, and translation support so parents can communicate with each other. 12. Create time for joint planning, collaboration and dialogue. In master schedules and teacher assignments, teachers must be provided with joint planning time with other teachers (by grade level, interdisciplinary team, "house" team, or whatever organizational unit makes sense given the restructuring design of the school site). In addition, the structure of the school work day, week and year must be expanded to provide occasional opportunities for school community wide retreats, dialogue, planning and reflection. In whatever discretionary funds might be available to the school, resources must be explicitly made available for time, facilitation and facilities for planning and dialogue. 13. Seek the involvement of community based organizations and agencies that provide other than academic services for families. Following are strategies for forging new school-linked service partnerships: a. Conduct an assessment of children and family needs and community resources. The assessment of school resources must encompass existing pupil support services such as student study teams, school social workers, the SB 65 Coordinator and others. b. Analyze the availability and appropriateness of services for the various ethnic and linguistic groups present in the school community. c. Create forums for school staff, parents and service providers to discuss how supports and resources need to be created or reconfigured, and to develop criteria for identifying students and families who would benefit most from services. d. Involve community based organizations that serve the students' communities and offer critical insights about how to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services.

Conclusions and Recommendations 3'6 315 e. Engage classroom teachersnot just pupil support staff and administratorsin the development of the school-linked services component. f. Provide time for school staff and service providers to learn about each other's skills, strengths, limitations and underlying philosophies and discuss how they can best work in partnership with each other. g. Make sure the various school and school-linked efforts to reach out to families are coordinated and build upon each other. h. Design the school-linked services component so that it is integrated with pupil support services and is linked to school restructuring decision making processes and forums. i. Find ways to reward service providers, teachers, administrators and parents for working collaboratively. 14. Develop site based evaluation systems with the involvement and participation of all parts of a school community, particularly in those schools where the professional staff does not come from the communities of the students. This dialogue must explicitly focus upon concerns about equity and take into account the very different educational goals that may be found in a racially, culturally, linguistically diverse community. Only through such a process can accountability mechanisms, indicators and goals be appropriate and useful. The dialogue and planning must also take place in an atmosphere of respect, free from retribution, humiliation and blame. 15. Develop data systems in partnerships with districts as well as teachers, parent/caregivers and community voices. All schools must have access to data about their school program which provides the following basic minimal information subaggregated by race, language and gender: School completion rates Attendance rates Expulsion/suspension rates Enrollment in A-F, and Advanced Placement courses, and in GATE programs LEP program compliance Placement in remedial and skills classes Enrollment in elective courses Passage rates on high school graduation tests Retention rates 16. Utilize multiple forms of student grouping through the school day, week and year, including many forms of same-type groups and varying forms of cross-type groups. Schools must be flexible in their approaches to meeting the learning needs of individual students. In keeping with a twin commitment to targeted instruction and to integration, faculty must be trained to recognize when different groupings are appropriate at different times for students, and how to teach effectively within varied groupings.

316 r lie, The Unfinished Journey G. THAT THE PRINCIPAL AND THE INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP OF RESTRUCTURING SCHOOLS: 1. Make it an explicit priority to foster expertise in equity and diversity. They must also be committed to keeping these issues on the table and seeking technical assistance to analyze how student needs related to race, culture, language and national background can be addressed in restructuring.

H. THAT PRIVATE FOUNDATIONS: 1. Consider multiple strategic demonstration projects in school restructuring related to issues of equity and diversity. For example, support is needed for restructuring schools that have expertise in bilingual programs and second language acquisition but are still struggling to build these into strongly integrated educational and social programs for students. 2. Support the proliferation of restructuring schools committed to an agenda of equity for their diverse students. This can be accomplished by supporting networks and dissemination, and the creation of strategic demonstration projects in this area. 3. Support programs aimed at leadership development for educators in restructuring schools so that they can become knowledgeable and committed to issues of diversity and equity. 4. Must not fund restructuring efforts in schools that are out of legal compliance with regard to serving their LEP students, unless addressing that major gap is a central component of their restructuring plan. Foundations must restrict their awards to those school sites which have created disaggregated data systems to reflect and evaluate the impact of their program on students on different races, gender and LEP status. 5. Fund the non-profit sector's important activities that support and inform the central activities of restructuring schools. Schools rely on the nonprofit sector for research, technical assistance, conferences, coaches, data collection and professional development. The outside "critical friend" role provided by non-profits provides new lenses for looking at schools, and objective facilitation. Particularly, support should be focused on those projects dealing with the issues of equity, inclusiveness and diversity. 6. Urge and support more collaboration and coordination across non-profit projects. 7. Assess the connection among reforms at sites undergoing multiple reforms, and use funding to encourage sites to connect their own reforms so that they build upon each other and eliminate unnecessary or duplicative governance structures. 8. Strengthen collaboration with other foundations and with state agencies to coordinate funding of initiatives, so as to ensure that they are not working at cross purposes, and to assess how well their combined efforts are addressing equity for diverse students.

Conclusions and Recommendations 308 317 9. Increase support for community based organizations to be involved in school-linked services efforts. This includes time and training to participate in the collaborative process. 10. Increase support for efforts designed to build the capacity of parents, community residents and advocacy groups to participate in decision making processes, and to have a voice in shaping and monitoring school restructuring.

I.THAT UNIVERSITIES, SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION, CREDENTIALLING AND CERTIFICATION PROGRAMS, AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOP- MENT PROGRAMS: 1. Prepare educators for the new roles and skills that restructuring demands. These include facilitation, planning, mediation, management, as well as the core pedagogies for teaching and learning in a diverse society. Teacher training core curriculum must teach skills and approaches for working with parents and families cross-culturally and cross-lingually; solid knowledge of second language acquisition issues and the implications of bilingualism for educational programs; understanding how to collect and use input and outcome data to inform teaching and educational planning; understanding school budget processes; working collaboratively; and understanding one's own cultural, ethnic and linguistic background as a factor in one's teaching. 2. OffertheBilingualandCross-CulturalAuthorizations (BCLAD/CLAD). Given the critical shortage of trained teachers, and the devastating impact of a teaching force without the expertise to work with language and cultural minority students, it is imperative to prepare new and continuing teachers in the areas of bilingual and cross-cultural instruction. 3. Engage in and support efforts to develop interdisciplinary preser- vice education for all teachers and human service providers. Such efforts must 1) ensure that core curriculum for all disciplines includes strategies for working across disciplines, working with culturally and linguistically diverse populations, and building on family strengths; 2) provide opportunities for students to do their practice in interdisciplinary programs; and 3) offer faculty opportunities to conduct cross-disciplinary research. These efforts may be modeled upon the innovative strategies currently being piloted by California State University, Fullerton and the University of Southern California.

J. THAT SCHOOL REFORM AND RESTRUCTURING PROJECTS: 1. Review their models and processes in consideration of the research on education for linguistic, cultural and racial minority students. They must collaborate with one another in demonstration project efforts to encourage, document and disseminate models that address these students' needs.

318 309 The Unfinished Journey 2. Immerse staff in the literature on effective bilingual programs and second language acquisition, and on the role of culture, race and language in children's schooling experiences, and campaign to bring that body of expertise to restructuring schools. 3. Convene their coaches and leaders to discuss how to ground their efforts in the research base on working with specific ethnic, cultural, racial, and linguistic minority communities. They must provide facilitation and leadership on issues of diversity and equity.

K. THAT THE MEDIA: 1. Report in a balanced and comprehensive manner on the restructuring movement overall and the efforts of individual schools. The public must be informed of the tremendous strides in school reform as well as the gaps between racial and linguistic groups of students that may be perpetuated in schooling practices. 2. Report in a balanced and comprehensive manner on the state's changing demographics and the role of schools in preparing young people to live and work together peacefully, productively and equitably in a diverse society.

L.THAT EDUCATIONAL ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS AND PROFES- SIONAL ASSOCIATIONS CONCERNED WITH DIVERSITY AND EQUITY: 1. Place a high priority on dialogue and dissemination of their research to restructuring schools and to the larger policy arena that shapes restructuring. These groups can strongly inform and promote a focus on meeting the needs of specific language, cultural or ethnic/racial minority groups in the schools.

M. THAT CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS WITHIN CULTU- RAL, LINGUISTIC AND RACIAL/ETHNIC MINORITY COMMUNITIES: 1. Develop their capacity to address access and equity in education so as to vigilantly monitor these issues, and to be a resource to restructuring schools and districts that are grappling to design responsive and appropriate programs.

N. THAT COMMUNITIES AS A WHOLE: 1. Mount an organized defense to reaffirm the importance of a free, universal public education system for all students including undocumented students. Forums and other mechanisms must be used to disseminate information that can counter the current tendencies to ignore, overlook or resist notions of access, equity and free universal schooling. In addition to parents of currently enrolled students, great contributions can be made by public education foundations, school volunteer organizations and local civic groups in the fight for a public investment in education and an understanding of the future stakes in that investment.

Conclusions and Recommendations 31.0 319 Research Methodology

Case Study Schools Demographic Chart

Case Study Field Guide

Phone Sample Interview Questions

Resources for Restructuring Schools

Bibliography

Glossary

Case Study School Contact List

311 !APPENDIXA Research Methodology

The research for the Education for a Diverse Society/School Restruc- turing Project was conducted in 1991 through 1993. The project was designed to document what was occurring in school restructuring efforts throughout California through a lens of concern for equity and diversity. The project asked two fundamental questions: 1. What does it look like when schools restructure to better meet the needs of a culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse student population? 2. To what extent is school restructuring as a policy initiative and reform movement resulting in attention to the issues of culture, race and language diversity, and to what extent is this reform movement resulting in challenges in outcomes which are more equitable than traditional standard school practice? To answer these questions, we designed a two-pronged strategy. First, we hoped to identify and provide in-depth documentation of the work of schools which were involved in creatively restructuring schools to address cultural, linguistic and ethnic complexities of their student populations. The sample of 32 schools selected for this aspect of the research are referred to as the "case study" schools. Second, we wanted to gauge the overall patterns of response to issues of diversity within restructuring schools. A stratified random sample of restructuring schools was selected for in-depth telephone interviews. This sample is referred to as the "broader sample" or "phone interview schools". The design for both the case study and broader samples centered on examining what was occurring in school restructuring through a lens informed by the literature on effective schooling for cultural, linguistic and racial minorities. Our perspective was further informed by our participation in the National Coalition of Advocates for Students in the development of the ten central principles of "The Good Common School". This analysis led to the identification of nine concerns: 1. We were concerned with inclusiveness in determining the school- wide vision and in designing and assessing the school program. We knew from the literature how important it is to ensure widespread ownership and involvement, particularly with regards to the participation of the language and cultural minority communities. Therefore, we wanted to know: Whose school is this? What is the governance and decision making process? Whose voices are heard in the reshaping and running of the school? 2. We were concerned, given the diversity of school communities, that parent and school relationships be strong, and that schools and the communities in which students reside enjoy a rich interactive relationship. Therefore, we wanted to know: What is the nature of home-school relationships, and in what ways is the school an active part of the communities in which students live?

322 312 The Unfinished Journey 3. Given the history of segregation and separation, and a history of failures to meet the needs of many minority students, we were concerned with an emphasis on strongly heterogeneous and integrated grouping as well as on appropriate and active programs to address the specific needs of particular cultural and linguistic groups. Therefore we wanted to know: How are students grouped and placed, and what relationship does this have to addressing particular language, cultural and other needs? What relation does this have to an integration agenda? What kinds of supports are schools designing to ensure that all students can participate fully in the core academic program? 4. We understood from the literature the need for an academic program that respects and affirms the languages and cultures of all students, which is accessible to all students, and which addresses in curriculum content a societal need to expand the knowledge base to incorporate the full human story. Therefore, we wanted to know: How was the academic program being designed to provide all students with a comprehensible, accessible, culturally supportive curriculum and teaching strategies? 5. Understanding that immigrants arrive with varied levels of prior schooling in quite different national schooling systems, and that all students develop in an uneven and highly individualized process, we envision a schooling system in which a broad variety of assessment strategies are utilized, and in which there is maximum flexibility for movement within the program in response to student needs. Therefore, we wanted to know: What approaches were being taken to student assessment of academic progress? What relationship does that assessment have to movement through the program? 6. Children, youth and families have a broad array of needs for health and human services to enable them to lead full, healthy lives. These factors greatly affect school participation, and yet schools are unable to meet the needs directly. Therefore we wanted to know: How were schools working towards the restructuring of relationships between schools and other youth and family serving agencies so that students and their families would have access to a well coordinated, broad range of linguistically and culturally appropriate needed services? 7. We envision a safe, inclusive democratic community of adults and children engaged together in efforts to combat the forces of racism and separation. This inclusive learning community needs to exist within a facility that is appropriate to learning. Therefore, we were concerned with: How safe, attractive and appropriate are the facilities? How are schools creating a climate that actively works to combat prejudice, racism and separation, and what kinds of affir- mative efforts are they creating to connect students across lines of culture, language and race? 8. The challenges facing teachers at this time of swiftly increasing diversity are enormous. Teachers need opportunities and resources for reflection, joint planning, professional development, and maxi-

Appendices 313 323 mum involvement in shaping an overall school program. Therefore we wanted to know: How were teachers' jobs and work roles being redesigned to create time, opportunity and resources for a full range of professional development to help them meet the challenges of diverse classrooms? How are teachers' roles being redesigned in order to deliver a restructured program? 9. Due to the legacy of a history of inequitable access to education, it is imperative that schools and communities have data which can inform them of the strengths and weaknesses of the school program with regards to the experiences of particular groups of students. Therefore we wanted to know: What kinds of accountability and data systems were schools desigr.ing and putting into place to keep tabs of which groups of students are benefiting and which may not be from the educational programs in place? In addition to these nine areas of specific concern, we sought to simply learn what we could from the plans, visions and experiences of schools with diverse students which were involved in restructuring. Therefore, we sought to learn about both the content and process of restructuring in each school.

The Case Studies In January of 1992, California Tomorrow circulated a letter requesting nominations of schools which were restructuring and which were focusing upon issues of language, culture, equity and diversity. Four hundred letters were sent to key people within the restructuring field as well as to advocates and educators involved in reform movements associated with bilingual education, effective schools for racial minorities, and other equity and access movements in education. We received over 100 nominations. Telephone calls were then made to these schools requesting copies of restructuring plans, and to interview key school personnel. As a result of this screening, we assembled an initial sample of twelve case study schools based upon a desire for regional distribution, population diversity, and approaches to restructuring. As we began to understand the complexities of restructuring in relation to issues of diversity and equity, we realized we needed a wider sample. Twice we added more schools to the case study group in order to increase the size of the sample. Eventually we visited and studied thirty-two different schools. A multi-disciplinary and multi-racial project team of between two and five California Tomorrow researchers visited the schools spending from 1 to 4 days on site. Interviews were conducted with teachers (including bilingual and ESL teachers as well as key planners), administrators, key planners, parents, students (in all secondary and some elementary schools), instructional assistants and classified staff. In addition, in those sites with school-linked service programs, interviews were conducted with personnel of agencies involved in the collaboration. In all, we conducted 256 interviews with teachers, 81 interviews with administrators, 47 interviews with other certificated staff members, 59 interviews with classified staff, 81 interviews with parents, 71 interviews with students, and 17 interviews with other agency staff. At each site, we attempted to collect data on student achievement and participation, subaggregated by ethnicity and language status. In particular we sought to collect data on: suspensions and expulsions and disciplinary referrals;

324 The Unfinished Journey d retention, promotion, and graduation rates and drop out data; standardized test scores and grade point averages; enrollment in GATE and special education; A-F course enrollment; information on the ethnic composition of classified and certificated staff; and college going rates. We collected school restructuring plans, grant proposals and other written materials describing the restructuring effort. Other written materials reviewed included: WASC reports, school accountability report cards, parent newsletters, parent and student handbooks, and recruitment materials. In addition, project staff observed classes, extra-curricular activities and school grounds. The Case Study Field Guide is attached as Appendix C.

Telephone Interviews with the Broader Sample Forty-one schools were selected for telephone interviews in our broader sample. An initial list was compiled of all schools in California receiving SB 1274 planning grants, schools involved in the state whole school reform initiative Every Student Succeeds, Accelerated Schools Pro- ject sites, Coalition for Essential Schools sites, and district restructuring efforts. A random sample pool of 33 schools were selected from this list. The pool was selected to reflect regional and ethnic/linguistic diversity. Each school was contacted by a letter explaining the purpose of the study and inviting their participation. A study team member followed up with a phone call and if the school was willing to participate, a copy of the telephone questionnaire was sent in advance of the interview. The interview questions are attached as Appendix D. In most cases the inter- viewee was the Principal, but in some cases the Principal designated a teacher or a site administrator to be interviewed. Interviews lasted approximately one hour. In addition, eight additional phone interviews were conducted with schools that had submitted high scoring SB 1274 planning proposals. A similar interview protocol was followed. A small honorarium of $25 was provided to each of the schools interviewed for the broad sample in recognition of their participation.

Analysis In Spring of 1993, California Tomorrow convened three retreats of personnel from restructuring schools and projects which had been involved in the research. The purpose of the retreats was to share and get feedback on our first-cut analysis of the data, and to brainstorm the policy implications of the findings. One retreat was held in Santa Cruz for key planners, restructuring project "coaches" and teachers from the northern California research sites. The second was held in Laguna Beach for a similar group from southern California sites. The third was held in Pomona for Principals from each of the sites statewide. These retreats confirmed many of our findings, sent us back to the data to reflect anew on some of the findings, and helped forge the policy agenda in this report. A panel of "readers" was selected to review a first draft of the document. And, in early August, California Tomorrow's national project advisors met in Chicago to review the manuscript and discuss the national policy implications of the report.

Appendices 315 325 APPENDIX B Case Study Schools: Location and Demographic Composition of Student Population

School City School District County Total Stud.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS Alianza Elementary Watsonville Pajaro Valley Joint Unified Santa Cruz 599 Argonne Elementary San Francisco San Francisco Unified San Francisco 352 Fourth Street Elementary Los Angeles Los Angeles Unified Los Angeles 1214 Frank Paul Elementary Salinas Alisal Union Elementary Monterey 782 Hawthorne Elementary Oakland Oakland Unified Alameda 1288 Madison Elementary Stockton Stockton City Unified San Joaquin 808 Manchester Elementary Manchester Manchester Elementary Unified Mendocino 54 Mark Keppel Elementary Paramount Paramount Unified Los Angeles 618 Melrose Elementary Oakland Oakland Unified Alameda 501 Paul Revere Elementary San Francisco San Francisco Unified San Francisco 524 Valencia Park Elementary San Diego San Diego City Unified San Diego 1055 Vaughn Street Elementary San Fernando Los Angeles Unified Los Angeles 1019 Virginia Rocca Barton Elementary Salinas Alisial Union Elementary Monterey 1028 Windsor Elementary Windsor Windsor Union Sonoma 846

MIDDLE SCHOOLS Carr Intermediate Santa Ana Santa Ana Unified Orange 1685 De Anza Junior High Calexico Calexico Unified Imperial 1090 Horace Mann Middle San Francisco San Francisco Unified San Francisco 621 MacDowell Sixth Grade San Diego San Diego Unified San Diego 320 O'Farrell Community San Diego San Diego Unified San Diego 1393 Olive Vista Junior High Sylmar Los Angeles Unified Los Angeles 1716 Rancho Milpitas Middle Milpitas Milpitas Unified Santa Clara 661 Wilson Middle San Diego San Diego Unified San Diego 1633

HIGH SCHOOLS

Artesia High Lakewood ABC Unified Los Angeles 1867 Belmont High Los Angeles Los Angeles Unified Los Angeles 4490 Calexico High Calexico Calexico Unified Imperial 2062 Dewolf Continuation High Fresno Fresno Unified Fresno 263 Florin High Sacramento Elk Grove Unified Sacramento 2375 Franklin Senior High Los Angeles Los Angeles Unified Los Angeles 2793 International Studies Academy San Francisco San Francisco Unified San Francisco 545 Oceana High Pacifica Jefferson Union High San Mateo 379 Overfelt (William C.) High San Jose East Side Union High Santa Clara 2097 Santa Maria High Santa Maria Santa Maria Unified Santa Barbara 2481

Source: California State Department of Education, 1992

326 316 The Unfinished Journey American Pacific Hispanic/ African Indian Asian Islander Filipino Latino American/Black White % LEP

71 0 0.7 0 0.5 80.8 0.8 17.2 18.8 0.6 57.7 0 2.8 5.7 9.4 23.9 58.5 0.1 0.3 0.1 0 99 0.2 0.4 65.1 0.6 1.5 0 2.6 92.6 0.6 2.1 0.9 20.8 1.4 4.9 54.7 15.4 2 63.7 1.5 25.3 0.9 2.4 28.1 6.8 35.2 31.8 11.1 0 0 0 31.5 0 57.4 23.8 78.2 0.3 2.9 0.2 0.3 86.9 7.6 1.8 60.5 0 11.2 0 0.4 61.3 26 1.2 38.6 0 13 1.3 17.9 38.4 24.6 4.8 0.4 9.1 1.3 16.2 18.5 47.3 7.2 21.8 0 0.1 0 0.1 92.9 6.4 0.5 73.8 67.9 0 0.1 0 0.9 96.6 0.8 1.7 2.5 0.7 0.6 0 42.1 0.4 53.8 19.6

0.1 5 0.6 0.3 91.5 1.4 1.3 67.3 0.4 0.6 0 0 97.6 0.1 1.3 72.1 20.5 18.6 1 24.2 0.2 6 38.3 10 0 3.4 0 1.3 79.1 5.9 10.3 51.7 0.1 5.8 2.1 33.1 16.2 35 7.8 13.3 0.5 0.8 0.1 0.5 81.7 4.4 12 36.3 1.5 20.7 0.5 12.1 20.9 7 37.4 27.1 0.4 24.5 0.6 0.8 39.3 22.5 11.9 45

0.2 20.2 0.2 5 42.4 8.8 23.3 30.7 40 0.1 8.1 0 5.2 84.6 1.1 0.8 0 1.9 0 0 97 0 1 63.4 1.1 8.8 0 0 56.3 17.9 16 17.5 20.1 1 22.3 1.4 7.7 11.5 17.3 38.9 0.3 10.3 0.2 2.8 82 1.3 3 25.7 21.7 0.7 30.6 C 9.4 31.4 11.2 16.7 0.8 5.3 1.1 16.9 19 5.8 51.2 2.2 4.4 57.9 1 14.2 1.4 12.2 62.2 4.6 1.1 1.7 0.3 5 63.2 2.9 26 38.3

Appendices 317 327 APPENDIX C

Case Study Field Guide: Questions for Research at School Sites

Key Questions Overall: In what ways is diversity, equity or the nature of the student population central in the rationale and direction of the overall restructuring emphasis at this school? in the formal plans and goals? in conversations/discussions with people about their restructuring efforts? How does the school restructuring effort utilize research on minority student achievement and participation, on cultural and linguistic diversity and equity? Which of the components of restructuring are efforts to make the program more responsive to issues of diversity and equity? What can be learned from each school's efforts to shape the program, structure and curriculum to the needs of their own student population?

I. School /Community Description Where is the school located? What kind of community? What is the history of demographic change, other relevant changes in the community? Description of the student body: by race, LEP, language groups, AFDC, Chapter I, grade levels, size Description of the teaching force (size, race, bilingual or LDS credentials) Configuration of the school: grade levels, year round, school within school, etc.

II. History of Involvement in Restructuring How did the school get involved? (relationship to SB 1274? to national or other restructuring projects? who initiated?) Was there a precipitating event? person? What are they trying to accomplish through restructuring? What is the "problem" or "challenge" they are trying to solve through restructuring? What has been the basic approach to restructuring? What is the focus of the restructuring? What is the overall process? What did they do first? Why did they start there? Where in the process are they now? Next steps?

328 The Unfinished Journey 1 What, if any, special funding do they have for this process? What kind of allocation or reallocation of resources have accompanied the restructuring effort? Is there a relationship to research or to national restructuring projects or models? Is there an "outside" or third party change agent working with the school? If so, what is their role? How essential is this aspect to the restructuring process? What provisions in the restructuring plan are particularly relevant to the needs of LEP students? to language minority children?

III. Whose school is this? issues of Ownership and Governance What is the school's vision of restructured governance processes which they are creating or building towards? What is the rationale/explanation for why they are restructuring governance? What issues have come up in the implementation of their governance vision? problems/challenges/concerns/changes, etc. How do they make issues of widespread ownership of program, and/or involvement in governance a reality for language minority students and parents? for working parents? for parents/families who live far from the school? Where is the overall locus of responsibility/control being located in the restructuring changes? Has the restructuring effort sought to and/or accomplished altered relationships between school and central district? In what ways? Is this "site based management"? What do they mean by that? (concrete probes: responsibility for budget, curriculum, personnel decisions, testing, data collection and analysis, staff development) In what ways, if any, is the restructuring process aiming at changes in roles/responsibilities of: principal, teachers, parents, students, others? Are parents present in the governance system? how many? numeri- cal balance? Are those parents who are present in governance generally representative of the parent body? How are the parents involved in governance chosen? Is there an ongoing information flow (two way) between parents in governance and those who are not? How? What mechanisms? If parents are not involved in governance, what other mechanisms are in place to build ownership of the program, and to ensure input in decision making and responsiveness of the program to student needs and parent concerns? Are teachers present in the governance system? how many? numeri- cal balance? scope of power over: budget, program, hiring, program, curriculum, educational plan, personnel matters? Are those teachers who are present in governance generally representative of

Appendices 319 329 the teacher body? How are the teachers involved in governance chosen? Is there an ongoing information flow (two way) between teachers in governance and those who are not? How? What mechanisms? If teachers are not involved in formal governance, what mechanisms are in place to ensure teacher ownership of the reform process and input into decision making such that the program is responsive to their concerns? How do they make issues of widespread ownership of the program and process a reality for all teachers? What kinds of "splits" or different responses have occurred among the faculty with regards to the restructuring process? What role, if any, does the union play in the restructuring effort?

IV. Home-School / School and Community Relationships What is the vision of the relationship between home-school they are striving for? How important is this aspect of the restructuring process/thrust vis a vis other aspects? What is the rationale/explanation for altering relationships between home and school? What is the process they are pursuing for altering relations between home and school? What concretely are they doing? With what kinds of results? How are these efforts designed to address issues of language, culture and race? Are written and oral communications from the school in the languages of the home (this includes information about individual children, about school programs and curriculum, official documents, newsletters, availability of translators at all meetings; bilingual signs in the hallways). Does the school encourage the conditions which make it possible for parents to attend school meetings and conferences (e.g., child care, locations close to parents, flexible hours, etc.)? Do parents have easy access to the school (are there open door policies in the classrooms, etc.)? Does the school arrange mechanisms for parents to associate with other parents (a parent room, bulletin board, etc.)? Does the school support (organize or provide support for parent organized) educational programs for the parents (GED, ESL, etc.)? How is it determined what to provide? How utilized are these? Are staff provided training and support in working with families? What kind? Do teachers feel they get sufficient/appropriate help in working with parents? 320

330 The Unfinished Journey Do parents feel the administration is responsive to parental requests for conferences (are there regular open office hours set aside for parents?) and to parental concerns? Are parents generally aware of the formal appeals process, with due process, for school decisions regarding placements, special education, suspensions, etc.? Who, if anyone, serves a home-school liaison role? Do they speak the languages and/or are they from the communities of the students ? What do the liaisons do? What are the issues of conflict or contention among parents? Between parents and the school? How are these dealt with? Does the central district and/or the school site have data systems in place and provide regular informational reports to parents and students and community members regarding: attendance patterns, course passage rates, student enrollment in programs, discipline, retentionaggregated by the demography of the student population by race, LEP status, overage status, drop-outs, gender? How important are community relationships in restructuring? What is the vision of an ideal relationship between school and community that they are striving for? What strategies are they pursuing to create new relationships between school and community? Are community groups and leaders welcomed, invited onto campus, and understood to have a vital interest in the school? Are they informed about activities and issues at the school? Give examples. Is the school involved in community events, and providing opportunities and support for student involvement in community organizations and events? Give examples. Does the school host/conduct/or provide a site for educational programs for the community? What kinds? Where does instruction occur? What is the definition of the boundaries between school campus and outside?

V. Student Grouping and Placement What is the vision of the ideal grouping and placement system that the restructuring effort is reaching for? What is the school actually doing? (heterogeneous groupings within classrooms? detracking program overall? multi-age? multi-race? LEP-English fluent?) To what degree is this a major thrust of the restructuring effort? What is the rationale/explanation for why? What strategies are they pursuing in changing admission, grouping or placement systems in the school? Which grouping issues are a source of conflict or contention? Between whom?

3 21 Appendices 331 How do district assignment policies effect the mixture of students at the school? To what degree does this school reflect the student composition of the whole district? What, if any, admission policies or criteria affect enrollment in this school? If there is a specific criteria, is it made explicit and widely disseminated to parents and community organizations in a format and language they can understand? Are students turned away from admission to this school? (because of selective criteria? because of space limitations which fill up?) How does this affect immigrant students or others whose mobility results in mid-year enrollment? Are certain students specifically referred to this school? Why? Does the school have practices that assign students to separate classes or pull-out programs on the basis of ability or other criteria? What is the relationship between bilingual programs and the mainstream program? What happens to LEP and newly arrived immigrant students? To special education students? Does the school group children in heterogeneous clusters? If so, which kinds of heterogeneity? (age/skill leveUlanguage/gender)? Do they employ special instructional techniques to accommodate such diversity? What are they? (team teaching, cooperative learning, interdisciplinary curriculum, accelerated learning). What kind of training/support do teachers have to adopt these strategies? Which seem most successful? Are there promotional gates? What is the average and range of class sizes? Is class size a focus of the restructuring effort? In all subjects? What is the rationale? Is there an approach to building either a vertical continuity, or hori- zontal continuity to allow for the creation of a strong community of students and adults which move through the system together? If yes, how do they do this? What kinds of groupings/assignment does the school create in order to develop a sense of community among students, and between students and adults? Are courses or programs designed or labeled with regards to different post secondary destinations, or according to the performance levels of students in them? How many "tracks" exist? How are they labeled? What are the requirements/what is the assignment process for placement in a track? Where are LEP students within this? Do all students have access to all classes? If not, what is the reasoning/rationale? What is the impact re: racial/ethnic distribution? Is there flexibility in movement through the program, and in mechanisms for credit accumulation? How does the school create this flexibility? At the secondary level, is there racial, ethnic, language group and gender heterogeneity in elective courses? in key gatekeeper courses

332 322 The Unfinished Journey like science and adva iced math? If yes, what strategies and supports does the school pursue to promote and support that heterogeneity? Is there flexibility in the age/grade placement policies and systems? How does the school determine age-appropriate skills and knowledge? What do they do with students who do not fit this model? Do all students have available to them a full course of study and full schedules?

VI. Comprehensible, Supportive, Accessible Curriculum To what extent is the academic program/curriculum a major focus of the restructuring effort? Why? What is the rationale/explanation? What is the vision of the ideal curriculum and academic program? What strategies is the school employing to work towards that vision? What curriculum or academic program issues are sources of major conflict/contention? How are teachers provided the time, support and acknowledgement of their role as curriculum developers and shapers? What kind of support is there for ongoing teacher and parent dialogue in the development of curriculum (time, space, staff development funds, resources, etc.)? What kind of motivational and academic/social support programs are available for students to help overcome impacts of previously differential educational and other life experiences such that they can participate fully and equitably in a common core curriculum, or in advanced placement courses and tracks if the school is tracked? What is the relationship between vocational education and the comprehensive program? What is the relationship between the bilingual or ESL program and the comprehensive mainstream program? Is school teaching/learning flexibly organized rather than con- strained by rigid and standard lengths? Within the school day? Over the school year? Are students provided both choices and authority/power to shape their own learning? In what ways? How much? Is the curriculum active, student directed, and does it emphasize student production of knowledge? Is student experience elicited and built upon? In what ways is this emphasized? Do teachers use a variety of teaching approaches? To what extent is teaching/learning community based? Can students' programs be built so they learn in a variety of educational and community settings (including community colleges, adult ed, apprenticeship opportunities, internships, museum programs, etc.)? Appendices 323 333 Is primary language support and instruction available for all LEP students? How? Is there strong teacher support and staff development opportunities which emphasize all teachers' mastery of second language acquisition techniques in schools which have LEP students? FEP students? Voluntary/mandatory? Which approaches are emphasized? Does the curriculum emphasize the development of reasoning and problem solving? To what extent, and in what ways do teachers make use of supplementary materials and school/classroom/student developed materials vs. textbooks? To what extent, and in what ways, is student collaboration encouraged? To what extent, and in what ways, does the curriculum formally focus on issues of racism, class stratification, and other forms of oppression? To what extent, and in what ways, does the academic program nurture the development of students' cultural, racial and linguistic identity? Are books available in the library (reference, novels, biographies, histories) about the home lands and cultures of the students? Are courses available which offer development of primary language to full literacy? Are textbooks available in the primary languages of the students? Are the literature, biographies, histories of the students' homelands and cultures intertwined in the academic program? How? Is the subject of human migration and immigration a focus within the curriculum? Is the curriculum comparative, involving multiple cultures and perspectives? Describe. To what extent, and in what ways, does the curriculum emphasize decision-making and citizen action? Is knowledge viewed as interdisciplinary, and does the organization of the school and the curriculum reflect this understanding? Have new curricular materials been developed by individual teachers or by the school to address these curriculum changes? What kinds of supplementary materials are being used?

VII. Assessment What changes in assessment, if any, is the school stri,:ng to make? What is the rationale/explano cion for why? To what extent is this a major thrust of restructuring? What is the school's assessment system? What testing programs are in place? Who mandates which tests? For which students? How often? Why? What are the consequences of the tests for individual students? (high stakes? gatekeepers?) What are the practical consequences for teachers/ for the curriculum? for the time and

334 324 The Unfinished Journey cost and content? Who gets the information? Are students assessed in their strongest language? How is assessment information communicated to parents? to students? Do teachers gather information about individual children in order to plan future lessons? What kinds of information? How? To what extent is assessment an integral part of teaching/learning? Do teachers document each child's progress towards mastery of specified educational goals throughout the year? How? Do teachers utilize a variety of assessment approaches, such as observations and notes, student portfolios, open-ended tests, collecting student products? What kinds of student assessment data is communicated to the student? to the parent? to others? What is the size of the central district budget for assessment? the school site's budget? ka On what basis are promotion/retention and graduation decisions made? What are the retention rates in the school? by race/gender/LEP? Is this data aggregated and reported by these demographic categories? Are high expectations for all students reflected in conversations with teachers, administrators, counselors, others on the school site? Is the goal of the assessment program for LEP students focused on bilingualism as well as proficiency in English and academic achievement in specific content subjects?

VIII. Coordination and Accessibility of Support Services Is this a thrust of the current efforts underway in the school or the district? If so, why? Was there any particular event which created this interest? How important is this thrust vis a vis other restructuring aspects? What is the rationale? What is the vision of the ideal relationship between schools and other services and agencies? How does the school seek to identify the non-educational needs of students and/or their families? What are these needs? Has the school ever taken an inventory of the programs it has in place to meet the non-educational needs of students? If so, what did they find? Are there any non-educational personnel currently involved in the school? Who are they? What kinds of roles do they play?

Appendices 325 335 Is the school or the district in which the school is located working closely with any agencies to be able to address student and family needs? What agencies? (public, non-profit, private; health, mental health, resettlement, etc.) What types of programs has the school developed with other agencies in order to respond to family/student needs? Have any agencies or groups located services at the school sites? what services? Are there any non-educational personnel who attend student study teams? Does the school have a list of contact people who work in other agencies which most often have contact with the students or families attending this school? Is there someone from another agency who provides case management services? If other services are provided at, near or through the school site, what are they? (health, recreational, academic support, mental health, legal) Are they culturally and linguistically accessible to the families? How do students access these services? Are the students identified by teachers? counselors? self-referred? Is there special funding attached to this coordination emphasis? Is there a blending of funding streams to provide comprehensive services? If there are personnel from other agencies, what is their relationship to existing school staff? Teachers? Are school counselors available at the school site? How are they used? How are they assigned to students? What is the student load? Are bilingual counselors available? Are teachers/counselors attached to a manageable group of students over long enough periods of time to get to know their needs and be aware of how students are doing? Are student support groups/rap groups/peer counseling services available? Are any of these services specific to the needs of particular ethnic/ racial groups? In what ways? Are they linguistically accessible? At the secondary level, is childcare available? employment? financial aid to stay in school? Who, at the school, is responsible for coordinating services in the school? Are teachers doing it? A specially designated person? At what level?

IX. School Safety and Climate Is this important in the overall restructuring vision? What is the explanation/rationale? What is the strategy or strategies for creating safe schools and climates which are supportive of diversity? What specific issues or conditions are th.: target of these strategies?

336 0 a The Unfinished Journey Is there a human dignity policy in place and widely known? Are clear expectations and bottom lines widely known regarding issues of tolerance and the consequences for transgressing? What is the policy? What are the consequences for breaking it? Is there an anti-racism curriculum and/or program in place at the school? What is the incidence of intergroup/racial violence or harassment? What happens, what interventions or programs get triggered by these incidents? What is in place to prevent them? Is there a conflict mediation program at the school? Is it culturally sensitive? Is there a stro..g multicultural school climate and environment? (in hallways and signs, in the supported student clubs and activities?) What is the school policy on ethnic/race identified student clubs and activities? Is the school campus safe? (data on thefts, fights, weapons, INS activity, confidentiality, etc.) To what extent are the school facilities a focus of the restructuring plan? What was the state of repair of the school when the restructuring effort began? At this point? Is information about school safety issues compiled? shared? Is there a deliberate effort (articulated, with support) to create a sense of community among teachers? among students? between teachers, students and families across lines of race, class, culture and language? Give examples. What is the attendance data? is it disaggregated? Is attendance considered an issue by the school? To what extent is it a target for school restructuring efforts? Why? What strategies does the school utilize to promote attendance? What are penalties for absence? The enticements to attend? Who is involved in developing attendance policies? Are there mechanisms for hearing from students why they are not attending? Is there a school discipline committee? comprised of who? Are there formal appeals processes? is due process observed? Is there an in-school suspension program?

X. Teachers Jobs, Work Roles and Support for Meeting the Challenge of Diverse Classrooms To what extent is the restructuring of teachers' work roles and work days a major thrust of the restructuring effort?

Appendices 327 337 Why? What is the rationale! is this based on dedication to teacher workplace control? professionalism? efficiency? sense of better serving the students?) What is the vision of teacher roles and jobs that the restructuring effort is trying to implement? What are the major issues, conflicts or challenges confronted in altering teachers' jobs and roles? Are teachers able to design, develop and assess their own development? With what kinds of support? Are there regular opportunities for teachers to work collaboratively to be engaged in curriculum development, problem solving, research, etc.? Is there time, place, power and resources for teachers to design, develop, and assess educational programs and curriculum with parents, community members and university folks to shape the strategies towards their common school vision? How does the school arrange this? Is there a pool of substitutes available to provide release time for teachers? Is there money, to allow teachers to go elsewhere to observe, etc.? Are teachers engaged with each other in ongoing discussions regarding student learning? Is there an active school committee involving parents and community members defining priorities and concerns for staff development? What specific mechanisms are in place for supporting teachers in teaming about the cultures, languages and experiences of their students? To what extent is professional development aimed at meeting the needs of linguistic and cultural minority students? In what ways? To what extent do issues of language, culture and the LEP program enter into the agendas of the committees and planning sessions of teachers? Why and how?

Xl. Accountability, Data and Miscellaneous How does the school measure progress in restructuring? Does the school have data on suspensions, expulsion rates, GATE or AP enrollment, special education enrollment, attendance, office referrals, enrollment in A-F courses? by race? by gender? by language group and status? How does the school use this data? What parties external to the school site are involved in evaluation or monitoring of the restructuring effort? Why? How? What are their measures and processes? If the school had maximum flexibility in the budget, what aspects of the school system or school budget would be cut, and what would be supplemented by this school? Does the school have control of its budget? Can they raise funds or is the school restricted to allocation of funds?

338 328 The Unfinished Journey To what extent, and in what ways, is technology an important tool in restructuring teaching and learning at the school?

XII. The Restructuring Process What have been the major challenges which have presented themselves in the implementation of this process? What changes have occurred in the vision and plan from the inception? Why? What are the biggest problems still facing this school? (from multiple perspectives) What have been the major enablers, strokes of luck, external supports which have made this effort work as well as it has? Which federal or state regulations have had to be waived in order to do what the school is trying to do? Which would they like to be able to waive or change to make additional progress towards the vision?

329 Appendices 339 APPENDIX D Phone Sample Interview Questions

1.What motivated you to restructure? Did additional resources (people, materials, money, etc.) play a role in your decision/ability to restructure? 2.Is your school part of a formal state, federal, or private restructuring effort? For example: SB 1274; the Coalition for. Essential Schools; the Stanford Schools Collaborative; the Corner model; Accelerated Schools, other? If so, please describe it. If your school restructuring effort isn't part of a formal effort, is it based on a particular philosophy or approach? If so please describe this philosophy or approach. 3. What is your "vision" of what school restructuring will accomplish? What are your long-term goals for this project? 4. Have there been any changes in the area of governance and decision making? How was the school governed before? How is it being governed now? Describe changes in terms of: new participants how they are selected makeup of governing body (for example, numbers of teachers, parents, etc.) what role the governing body plays, what decisions it makes what changes had to be made to make this new arrangement possible S.Have there been any changes in staff roles (principals, classroom teachers, resource teachers, aides)? If so, please describe what these roles were before and what they are now. Is staff organized differently to provide instruction? 6.Are children arranged for instruction differently than they were before? If so, describe the changes that have been made. (ungraded groupings, magnet schools, houses, for example) Are "special needs" students (LEP, Chapter 1, state compensatory education, Gate, special education) dealt with differently? If so, in what ways? Have student/staff ratios changed as a result of restructuring? In what ways and which subject areas? At the high school level, has restructuring influenced the way students are placed into A-F classes? Has it influenced the way students are placed into the following programs: continuation, independent study, concurrently enrolled adult, ROP, vocational education, other alternative programs? For each category, how was student placement determined before restructuring? How is it determined now? Are there any changes in the way you handle newly arrived immigrants? 7. Has restructuring resulted in any changes in curriculum and instruction? Is so, what did you do before? What do you do now? Who was involved in making these changes? Where have you turned to (other districts, state ::lepartment of education, university- based staff, pri-

340 33() The Unfinished journey vate consultants) for information to make changes in curriculum and instruction? Has restructuring resulted in any changes in your program for LEP students? If so, what was it before? What is it now? 8.Has restructuring changed the way you measure children's progress? promotion? retention? graduation? What was it before, and what is it now? 9. Have home-school relations changed as a result of restructuring? More specifically, have changes been made in parent education and training? in informing parents of child's school progress? in orienting parents to school? in providing information about school's track record? in helping parents access non-school related resources such as job training, health care, etc.? in making the school a place that is connected to and part of the community? In all of the above, have changes been made in how you grapple with different languages and cultural backgrounds? Have you made changes in the way you resolve differences between parent groups? 10. Does the school deal with non-educational needs (health, mental health, nutrition, child care, pregnancy, employment) differently as a result of restructuring? As you answer, think in terms of identification of student and family needs, accessing services, coordinating services, evaluating services? Specifically mention partnerships with other agencies and new funding. 11. Has school restructuring focussed on school safety and school climate issues? If so, what changes have been made? 12. Has school restructuring focussed on attendance policies? If so, what changes have been made? 13. What kind, if any, of staff development and collaborative planning have you instituted as part of the process of restructuring? How is this different from what occurred before? Who designs and assesses it? How does the school make collaborative planning possible? 14. What role, if any, has the union played? 15. What role, if any, has the district played in terms of waiving regulations, transferring authority, providing support? 16. What role, if any, has the state played in terms of waiving regulations, transferring authority, providing support? 17. What kind of state, district, or union waivers do you wish you had? 18. Of all the aspects of restructuring we have discussed, which are really the central focus and the heart of your vision and effort? Which are more incidental or of lower priority? 19. What have been the major enablers, strokes of luck, external supports which have made this effort work as well as it has? 20. What have been the major challenges and obstacles which have presented themselves in the implementation of this process? 21. Based on your perception, how much buy-in is there to actual imr tmentation? 22. What are the biggest problems still facing this school?

Appendices 341 ft et. APPEND E I

Resources for Restructuring Schools

Accelerated Schools 402 S CERAS, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, 415-725-1676 This project works in partnership with selected schools to restructure to meet the needs of 'at risk' students. The model involves the entire school community in uniting toward the goal of accelerated progress for all students, approaching the problem of 'at-risk' students by challenging them and building on their strengths rather than placing them in remedial situations. The Accelerated Schools Project provides training, facilitation, and support for involving school staff in a process of inquiry in which they learn to work together and develop and implement a school plan. Achievement Council P.O. Box 43387, Los Angeles, CA 90043, 213-487-3194 The Achievement Council is a statewide non-profit organization working to improve academic achievement among California's ethnic and low-income youth. The Council assists predominantly minority or low-income schools to turn-around so as to offer first-rate instruction and produce the highest level of achievement among their students. It creates opportunities for administrators and teachers from these schools to learn about effective practices and the change process, to look critically at their schools, and to plan and implement change. A World of Difference Anti-Defamation League, 121 Steuart Street, #302, San Francisco, CA 94105, 415-981-3500; 10495 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025, 310-446-8000 This is a national anti-prejudice campaign and includes a highly visible, intensive public relations campaign to reduce prejudice based on race, religion, ethnicity and national origin and to celebrate diversity and promote intergroup understanding. The ADL offers both written curriculum for K-12 schools and for community based groups that work with children and youth, as well as a teacher training component. Bilingual Education Office of the California Department of Education P.O. Box 944272, Sacramento, CA 94244-2720, 916-657-2566 The Bilingual Education Office promotes high-quality bilingual education for students in California through communication with educators, parents, legislators, and the public about bilingual education research and exemplary programs. The Bilingual Education Office functions within the Categorical Programs Division, Curriculum and Instructional Leadership Branch. The office is responsible for the administration of federal and state programs that address the planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of educational programs for students from non-English-language backgrounds. Publica- tions about specific language minority groups, about effective bilingual programs, and a newsletter reporting on cutting edge programs and research in the field are available through the office.

342 elan The Unfinished Journey California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE) 926 "J" Street, Suite 810, Sacramento, CA 95814, 916-447-3986 CABE is the professional association of bilingual education in Cali- fornia. The annual statewide conference draws many thousands of educators and advocates, and is the major vehicle for sharing information, disseminating models, accessing new curriculum materials, and engaging in policy discussions in bilingual education. Member- ship in CABE also provides a newsletter, access to policy alerts, and involvement in regional meetings and networks. California Center for School Restructuring 101 Twin Dolphin Dr., Redwood City, CA 94065, 415-802-5340 This center was created by SB 1274 to provide outreach and assistance to schools and districts receiving SB 1274 funding (See chapter 13 sidebar). They are also able to provide some limited support and information to restructuring schools which do not receive SB 1274 funding. Support for restructuring schools is handled through a network of regional leads in the county offices of education. California League of Middle Schools (CLMS) 18012 Cowan, Irvine, CA 92714, 714-261-2567 The California League of Middle Schools is an association of people interested in furthering the growth and development of middle schools and middle school concepts. The association is composed of parents, teachers, student teachers, school and district administrators, State Department of Education officials, and others with an interest in the education of early adolescents. CLMS holds an annual conference on middle school issues, ideas and reform; publishes a series of practitioners monographs on issues of interest to middle level educators; facilitates visits to exemplary middle schools; and serves as a resource for information on middle level publications, materials and agencies. California School Leadership Academy (CSLA) Program Develop- ment Center, 313 W. Winton Ave., Suite 373, Hayward, CA 94544, 510-887-8808 The California School Leadership Academy was created to provide site and central district administrators with ongoing opportunities to improve their management and leadership skills. The goal of the CSLA is the strengthening of instructional leadership skills of school leaders in order to improve services offered to public school students. California Subject Matter Projects (CSMP) Robert Polkinghorn, Jr., Director, University-School Education Improvement, University of California, Office of the President, 300 Lakeside Dr., 18th floor, Oakland, CA 94612-3550, 510-987-9505 The California Subject Matter Projects is a comprehensive effort by the State and the educational segments to establish and maintain a statewide, discipline-based professional development system for Cali- fornia's public schools and teachers. The CSMP are dedicated to the different subject areas required for high school graduation and provide opportunities for teachers to involve and immerse themselves in their specific disciplines. The CSMP enable teachers to enhance their content knowledge through intensive, long term interaction with post-secondary faculty, other public school teachers, key texts, and relevant research. The CSMP also help teachers acquire, critique and

Appendices 333 343 share exemplary teaching practices with a focus on teaching children from different ethnic/raciaUlinguistic backgrounds. There are eight CSMP content areas. These are: Arts, Foreign Language, Literature, Mathematics, Science, Writing, History/Social Science, and Interna- tional Studies. Center for Collaborative Change 1351 42nd Avenue, San Francis- co, CA 94122, 415-681-0142 The Center for Collaborative Change is a joint venture of the major educational, corporate and community partners concerned with schools in San Francisco. The mission is to increase coordination benveen individual school reform initiatives and public-private partnerships in order to maximize opportunities for system change within the San Francisco Unified School District. The CCC has created a coaching cadre to provide support to school sites, provides an information network on whole school change, and provides forums and workshops on key issues of whole school change in the district. Center on Families, Communities, Schools, and Children's Learning 3505 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, 410-516-0370 Through research, field studies, compilation of national statistics, and school community collaborations, the Center seeks to understand and build partnerships among and between families, schools, and communities. Several current projects address parent-school relationships with immigrant communities. Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1025 W. Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, 608-263-7575 Their five year program of research focuses on the experiences of students in school, the professional life of teachers, the governance, management and leadership of schools, and the coordination of community resources to better serve educationally disadvantaged students. The center publishes newsletters, briefs, a bibliography, and occasional papers. CHIME (Clearinghouse for Immigrant Education) 100 Boylston St., Suite 737, Boston, MA 02116, 800-441-7192, 617-357-8507 CHIME is a service of the National Center for Immigrant Students and a program of the National Coalition of Advocates for Students. It is an interactive clearinghouse and networking service that facilitates access to educational materials, organizations, and individuals concerned with the effective education of immigrant students. CHIME assists schools, parents, advocates, and others who support the school success of immigrant students and who are working to build a multicultural U.S. society. Coalition of Essential Schools Horace Box 1969, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, 401-863-3384. Bay Area Region: 101 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065, 415-802-5340 This coalition is a loose umbrella for Essential Schools across the country which are attempting to restructure based upon Theodore Sizer's nine principles. The focus is on the relationship between teacher, student, and the subjects of study that bring them together.

344 334 The Unfinished Journey Corner Model (School Development Project) Yale University Child Study Center, 230 South Frontage Road, PO Box 3333, New Haven, CT 06510, 203-785-2548 A school reform program developed by Dr. James Corner of the Yale Child Study Center and adopted by schools all across the country. The model approaches school improvement from the perspective that problems in low-income minority schools result from a lack of consistency between the students' experiences at home and at school. The model involves parents and the school staff working collaboratively on governance and mental health issues. CRESS Center (Cooperative Research and Extension Services for Schools) University of California, Davis, CA 95616-8729, 916-752-6135 The CRESS Center is a place where teachers and educational researchers combine resources to improve instruction and learning by exchanging ideas and experiences, and by conducting collaborative research. The Center houses professional and curriculum development projects, awards grants to teams of educational researchers, teachers and administrators to cooperatively design and conduct research; coordinates teacher research projects; and provides a program of colloquia, workshops, and publications for educators across disciplines and grade levels. Equity Institute 6400 Hollis Ave., Suite 15, Emeryville, CA 94608, 510-658-4577 Equity Institute is a multicultural, non-profit national agency which teaches people how to reduce racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, hetero- sexism, ageism, ableism, and classism. Equity Institute seeks to build effective coalitions and create more multicultural organizations and work-places by holding workshops, r2treats and training for students, teachers, other educators, and business people. Evaluation Assistance Centers ARC Associates, 1212 Broadway, Suite 400, Oakland CA 94612 (for northern California); 121 Tijeras NE, Suite 2100, Albuquerque, NM 87102, 800-247-4269 (for southern California) Evaluation Assistance Centers are federally supported resource centers providing technical assistance to state and local agencies in determining needs and assessing progress of Part A of Title VII programs. Activities include training, college credited course offerings, consultation, evaluation, and publishing a newsletter. Facing History and Ourselves 16 Hurd Road, Brookline, MA 02146, 617-232-1595 Facing History is a national educational and teacher training organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice and anti-Semitism by studying and comparing historical events to the present. FairTest - The National Center for Fair and Open Testing 342 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139, 617-864-4810 The center publishes a quarterly newsletter and various guides and reforms, and works to reform testing practices and policies.

Appendices 33%f 345 Foxfire Rabun Gap, GA 30568, 404-746-5318 Foxfire is a national non-profit dedicated to teach, model, and refine an active, learner-centered approach to education which is academically sound and promotes continuous interaction between students and their communities, so that students will find fulfillment as creative, productive, critical citizens. Global Education Program Network CISP, Stanford University, Littlefield Center, Room 14, 300 Lausen, Stanford, CA 94305, 415- 723 -6875 A statewide network of curriculum and staff development programs designed to improve international studies education. Workshops, summer institutes and curriculum services are available to teachers through the regional projects. The network is a resource for schools attempting to create a more inclusive and multiple perspectives curriculum for diverse communities. The regional centers are: Bay Area Global Education Program (BAGEP) 312 Sutter St., #200, San Francisco, CA 94108, 415-982-3263. North Bay International Studies Program California State University- Sonoma, Rachel Carson Hall, Room 10A, 1801 Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park, CA 94928, 707-664-2409 Resources in International Studies Program (RISE) Center for International Studies, California State University-Chico, Chico, CA 95929-0680, 916-898-6880 Program in International Studies and Multicultural Education (PIME) Institute for International Studies, California State University-Stanislaus, 801 Monte Vista Ave., Turlock, CA 95380, 209-667-3117 Inland Empire Consortium for International Studies (IECIS) San Bernardino Co. Superintendent of Schools, 601 North E Street, San Bernardino, CA 92410-3093, 714-387-4604 International Studies Education Project of San Diego (ISTEP) Center for Latin American Studies, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, 619-594-2412 South Bay World History Project (SBWHP) Dept. of History, California State University-Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90840-1601, 310-985-4449 Western International Studies Consortium (WISC) Immaculate Heart Cc liege Center, 425 Shatto Place, Suite 401, Los Angeles, CA 900;,0, 213-386-3116 The Herald Project San Francisco Unified School District/Parkside Center, 2550 25th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94116, 415-566-0230 The Humanities Education Research and Language Development Project's mission is to promote oral and written language performance for high school students from all academic and language backgrounds. The project supports interdisciplinary teams of teachers at many of the district's high schools. HERALD Project teams have been instrumental cores of restructuring efforts in many schools.

346 336 The Unfinished Journey Humanitas -Los Angeles Educational Partnership, 315 W. Ninth Street, Los Angeles, CA 90015, 213-622-5237 Humanitas is a thematic, interdisciplinary, writing based approach to instruction in the humanities operating in over twenty Los Angeles high schools. The model works with teams of collaborating teachers on curriculum development and teaching approaches for the humanities. Humanitas teams have piloted programs within schools, and have served as core forces in school restructuring. The project provides professional development, as well as ongoing communication between Humanitas teachers. Intercultural Development Research Association -5835 Callaghan Road, Suite 350, San Antonio, TX 78228, 210-684-8180 IDRA's purpose is to provide information concerning equality of opportunity in education. IDRA publishes teachers guides, student curriculum, interpersonal training manuals, and other materials. They also conduct workshops for educators on ESL, parent outreach, assessment, instructional strategies, multicultural education, and many other topics. A regular newsletter publishes important articles on issues of language minority students, Latino students, and on issues of equity in schooling. While IDRA focuses upon Texas and the Southwest, its publications and manuals are an important resource for all schools working with language minority and Latino students. LEARN (The Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now) -255 South Grand Avenue, Suite 203, Los Angeles, CA 90012, 213-25-LEARN. LEARN is a coalition of civic leaders and representatives of Los Angeles' diverse communities, united towards a common goal of improving education for "every child". (See chapter 6 in this report for a fuller description.) MCSIP (Mid California Science Improvement Project) -343 Second Street, Suite F-2, Los Altos, CA 94022, 415-948-8533 MCSIP provides training in curriculum and pedagogy. Originally started in Monterey County, the program has expanded to include teachers from other counties. Through MCSIP teachers develop their science knowledge base and receive training in Integrated Thematic Instruction (ITI). The ITI program is based on an understanding of brain compatible teaching and learning. Brain compatible means that the curricular content and instructional methodologies help students to learn in the most effective manner. Middle Grades Support Services Office -California Department of Education, 1919 21st Street, Sacramento, CA 95814, 916-322-1892 This office of the Department of Education coordinates a middle grade partnership network statewide. Ten regional networks of almost 400 schools address middle grades reform, largely based upon the document Caught in the Middle: Educational Reform for Young Adolescents in California Public Schools. The office disseminates a series of five videotapes with accompanying facilitator guides which document schools' efforts in the areas of interdisciplinary teaming, establishing advisories, scheduling and serving "at risk" students.

Appendices 337 347 Multi Cultural Collaborative (MCC) 1010 S. Flower St., Suite 211, Los Angeles, CA 90015, 213-748-2105 The Multi Cultural Collaborative is a multi-racial group of organizations seeking solutions to inter-ethnic conflict in Los Angeles. MCC efforts include: identifying effective models for improving inter-ethnic relations through assessment and analysis; facilitating the formation of a proactive network of community organizers, concerned citizens, activists and theoreticians to respond to areas of conflict and offer long-term policy recommendations; and promoting curriculum and programs aimed at improving inter-ethnic relations in the schools and in the community. Multifunctional Resource Centers 310 Eighth Street, Suite 301, Oakland, CA 94607, 510-834-9458 (northern California); California Polytechnic University-Pomona, 3801 West Temple Avenue, Pomona, CA 91768, 909-869-4919 (southern California) These are federally funded resource centers which provide training, information, technical assistance and support to schools receiving Title VII funding. The MRC conferences and materials are also available to schools which do not receive Title VII funding. The MRCs also publish a monthly newsletter for California educators covering issues relevant to the concerns of language minority students, their parents and school personnel. They are a major resource on working with language minority, immigrant and limited English proficient students. National Association for Asian and Pacific American Education (NAAPAE) do Janet Lu ARC Associates, Inc. 310 Eighth Street, Suite 22(, Oakland, CA 94607, 510-834-9455 Through a network of educators and community people, NAAPAE seeks to increase public awareness of the educational concerns and needs of Asian and Pacific American students. NAAPAE promotes the inclusion of Asian and Pacific American history and culture in the school curriculum, encourages research on Asian and Pacific Ameri- can educational topics, and promotes the participation of educators familiar with Asian and Pacific American concerns in diverse educational roles. National Association for Mediation in Education 425 Amity Street, Amherst, MA 01002, 413-545-2462 An organization of school officials, teachers, community mediation project staff, university and law school professors, and staff of educational organizations from across the country, interested in working with conflict resolution programs in schools and universities. They are a clearinghouse and disseminate information, facilitate networking, publish a bi-monthly newsletter, develop resource materials and sponsor conferences. National Association for Multicultural Education 1703 Longview Drive, Baton Rouge, LA 70806 NAME is a national professional association for educators concerned about multicultural education. They promote a philosophy of inclusion that embraces the basic tenets of cultural pluralism, celebrates cultural and ethnic diversity as a national strength that enriches a society. NAME has a clearinghouse, is establishing educational standards, sponsors an annual conference, provides technical assistance, and publishes a magazine.

348 338 The Unfinished Journey National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching (NCREST) Box 110 Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 212-678-3432 NCREST seeks to document, support and connect school restructuring efforts across the nation. NCREST believes that to create learning-centered, knowledge-based, responsible and responsive schools, fundamental and comprehensive changes must take place in school governance, teaching practices, curriculum, parent involvement, assessment and policy. National Center for Service Integration do National Center for Children in Poverty, 154 Haven Ave., New York, NY 10032, 212- 927 -8793 NCSI is a collaboration of six organizations, established to stimulate and actively support service integration efforts across the country by serving as a technical assistance resource and an information clearinghouse for documents, programs and organizations. The focus of attention is on the integration of education, health and other social services directed to children and families. National Center on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning 399 Kerr Hall, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, 408-459-3500 This center is a federally funded research center with the goal of promoting the intellectual development, literacy, and thoughtful citizen- ship of language minority students, and an appreciation of the multicultural and linguistic diversity of the American people. NCCDSLL hosts conferences and forums, and publishes research on issues of language minority students. National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education 8737 Colesville Rd, #900, Silver Spring, MD 20910, 800-647-0123 A national information center which provides reference and referral services on all aspects of bilingual and ESL instruction. The staff continually collects and reviews articles, resource lists and bibliographies. These bibliographies, resource packets, a free newsletter "Forum", and other materials are available. National Coalition of Advocates for Students 100 Boylston St., #737, Boston, MA 02116, 617-357-8507 This is a nationwide network of child advocacy organizations that work to improve access to quality public education for children of greatest need. NCAS has produced key publications and newsletters on issues of access and equity in schools. Several projects are particularly relevant to restructuring schools: The Good Common School Project (based upon their publication of the same name), Buscando America/Looking for America (a project on intergroup relations in schools between immigrant and U.S. born students), the Asian Parent Involvement Project, and the Immigrant Students Project (see page 344, CHIME). National Coalition of Education Activists PO Box 405, Rosendale, NY 12472, 914-658-8115 This is a coalition of activists in the field of education. In addition to a national conference, local chapters work on issues of local interest school finance, legislation on school reform, curriculum, etc. NCEE publishes a useful quarterly newsletter.

Appendices 339 349 National Council of La Raza (NCLR) 810 First Street, N.E. 3rd floor, Washington D.C. 20002, 202-289-1380 (national headquarters); 900 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1520, Los Angeles, CA 90017, 213-489-3428 (Los Angeles office) The National Council of La Raza is the nation's principal constituency- based Latino organization. Its headquarters are in Washington, D.C. They work on legislation, policy and research relevant to Latino communities. NCLR's Center for Community Educational Excellence in Los Angeles provides technical assistance to NCLR affiliates and other national, regional, and local organizations to improve the quality of education available to Latino students and their families; and to help community-based organizations to develop their capacity to provide educational services and become effectively involved in local efforts to improve education. The Center works to implement various community-based education initiatives, including: family literacy projects; after- school and summer academies; teacher training; parent support and training; dropout prevention; programs to increase parent involvement. Network of Educators on the Americas 1118 22nd Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037, 202-429-0137 Network of Educators on the Americas seeks to promote peace, justice and human rights through critical anti-racist multicultural education. The organization develops and disseminates classroom resources on the historical, economic, social, and cultural traditions of Central America. Southern Poverty Law Center 400 Washington Ave., Montgomery, AL 36101-0548, 205-264-0286 The Center combats hate crimes and white supremacist organizations through litigation and education. It also publishes Teaching Toler- ance, a free magazine providing teachers with resources for promoting interracial and intercultural understanding. TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) 1600 Cameron Street, Suite 300, Alexandria, VA 22314-2751, 703- 836 -0774 TESOL is a professional organization which promotes teaching and learning English while respecting language rights. TESOL publishes several periodicals with research on second language acquisition and teaching techniques, publishes resource books for teachers, has a professional development program including workshops and teleconfer- ences, and holds an annual convention. Tribes is a program of activities intentionally designed to build self esteem, responsible behavior, community, and academic achievement. A guidebook is available, though inservice training is recommended for successful implementation. Several restructuring schools are using Tribes activities among both the students and faculty to build trust, community and dialogue at the faculty level.

350 340 The Unfinished Journey APPENDIX F Bibliography (arranged by topic)

Parent Involvement Chan, Y. (1987, November).Parents: The Missing Link in Education Reform.Prepared Statement before the House Select Committee Hearing on Children, Youth, and Families, Indianapolis, IN. Chavkin, N.F. (1989, Summer). "Debunking the Myth about Minority Parents."Educa- tional Horizons,pp. 119-23. Comer, J.P. (1984, May). "Home/School Relationships As They Affect the Academic Success of Children"Education and Urban Society16(3): 323-37. Commins, N.L., (1992, Winter). "Parents and Public SchoolsThe Experiences of Four Mexican Immigrant Families"Equity and Choice,pp. 40-45. Delgado-Gaitan, C., (1991). "Involving Parents in the Schools: A Process of Empower- ment",American Journal of Education 100 (1):20-46. Epstein, J.L. (1984, November).Home and School Connections in Schools of the Future: Implications of Research on Parent Involvement.Johns Hopkins University, Center for the Social Organization of Schools; Baltimore, MD. Gonzalez, Berta. "Schools and Language Minority Parents: The Optimal Solutions".Cat- alyst for Change: Journal of the National School Development Council. Greenberg, P. (1989, May). "Parents as Partners in Young Children's Development and Education: A New American Fad? Why Does it Matter?"Young Children44(4): 61-75. Haynes, N.M.; Corner, J.P.; and Hamilton-Lee, M. (1989). "School Climate Enhance- ment through Parental Involvement."Journal of School Psychology27: 87-90. Henderson, A.T.; Marburger, C.L.; and Ooms, T. (1986).Beyond the Bake Sale. An Educator's Guide to Working with Parents.Columbia, MD: Committee for Citizens in Education. Henderson, A.T. (1987).The Evidence Continues to Grow. Parent Participation Improves Student Achievement.National Committee for Citizens in Education; Columbia, MD. Johnston, M. and Slotnik, J. (1985, February). "Parent Participation in the Schools: Are the Benefits worth the Burdens?"Phi Delta Kappan,pp. 430-33. Leler, H. (1983). "Parent Education and Involvement in Relation to the Schools and to Parents of School-Aged Children." In R. Haskins and S. Addams, eds.,Parent Edu- cation and Public Policy.ABLEX; Norwood, N.J. Lightfoot, S.L. (1981). "Toward Conflict and Resolution: Relationships between Families and Schools."Theory into Practice20 (2): 97-104. McLaughlin, M.W., and Shields, P.M. (1987, October). "Involving Low-Income Parents in the Schools: A Role for Policy?"Phi Delta Kappan,pp. 156-60. Morrow, R.D. (1989, April). "Southeast-Asian Parental Involvement: Can it be a Reality?" Elementary School Guidance and Counseling,volume 23, April 1989, 289-297. Nicholau, S. and Ramos, C. (1990).Together is Better: Building Strong Partnerships Between Schools and Hispanic Parents.Hispanic Policy Development Project, New York. Seeley, D.S. (1989, October). "A New Paradigm for Parent Involvement."Educational I eadershippp. 46-48. Williams, D.L., and Chavkin, N.F. ( 1989, October). "Essential Elements of Strong Parent Involvement Programs."Educational Leadership,pp. 18-20.

Appendices 351 et Yao, E.L. (1988, November). "Working Effectively with Asian Immigrant Parents". Phi Delta Kappan.

Second Language Acquisition,Bilingual Education and the Needs of LEP Students Ascher, C. (1990, May). "Assessing Bilingual Students for Placement and Instruction", Clearinghouse on Urban Education Digest, Number 65, May 1990. Baecher, Dr. R.E., Cicchelli, Dr. T., (1992, April). "Forging School-Community Partnerships: A Case Study of School Restructuring for Language-Minority Students", paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, April 1992. Bernstein, D.K., (1989, June). "Assessing Children with Limited English Profiencv: Current Perspectives", Topics in Language Disorders, June 1989 9(3): 15-20. California State Dept. of Education (1981). Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework, California State University Los Angeles. Chang, H.N. (1990). Newcomer Programs. Innovative Efforts to Meet the Educational Challenges of Immigrant Students. California Tomorrow. San Francisco, CA. Crawford, J. (1989). Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory and Practice, Crane Publishers, Trenton, NJ Cummins, J. (1986). "Empowering Minority Students: A Framework for Intervention." Harvard Educational Review 56(1): 18-36. Figueroa, R.A., et. al, (1984). "School Psychology and Limited- English Proficient (LEP) Children: New Competencies", Journal of School Psychology, Vol. 22, pp. 131-143. Garcia, S.B., Ortiz, A.A., (1988, June). "Preventing Inappropriate Referrals of Language Minority Students to Special Education", New Focus, Number 5, June 1988, pp. 2-12. Garcia, E. Education of Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Students: Effective Instructional Practices. National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning. Santa Cruz, CA. Garza, S.A. (1991, Spring). "Teaching Language Minority Students: An Overview of Competencies for Teachers", Teacher Education Quarterly, pp. 23-36. Green, G. (1987). Schools and Communities Working Together for Linguistic Minority Students. Massachusetts Department of Education: Quincy, MA. LaFontaine, H. (1987). "At Risk Children and YouthThe Extra Educational Challenges of Limited-English-Proficient Students." Paper prepared for the 1987 Summer Institute of the Council of Chief State School Officers, Washington D.C. Lucas, T.; Henze, R.; and Donato, R. (1990). "Promoting the Success of Latino Language-minority Students: An Exploratory Study of Six High Schools." Harvard Educational Review, 60(3): 315-340. Olsen, L. (1990). Bridges: Promising Programs for Immigrant Children. California Tomorrow: San Francisco, CA. Olsen, L. and Chen, M. (1988). Crossing the Schoolhouse Border: Immigran, Students and the California Public Schools. California Tomorrow: San Francisco, CA. Olsen, L., and Minicucci, C. (1992, Spring). "Programs for Secondary Limited English Proficient Students: A California Study." Focus (5): National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Washington D.C. Orando, C.J., Collier, V. (1985). Bilingual and ESL Classrooms: Teaching in Multicultural Contexts, McGraw Hill: New York. Romero, M. (1987, Spring). "Implementing Two-Way Bilingual Programs", Equity and Choice, pp. 17-21. Schmidt, P. (1991, February). "Three Types of Bilingual Education Effective, E.D. Study Concludes." Education Week 10(22).

352 342 The Unfinished Journey Wong-Fillmore, L., et al. (1985). Learning English Through Bilingual Education. National Institute of Education. Washington D.C. Wong-Fillmore, L., Meyer, L. M., "The Curriculum and Linguistic Minorities" AERA Handbook of Research on Curriculum, P.W. Jackson, Ed., MacMillan Co.: New York, NY.

Multicultural Curriculum Banks, J.A. (1987). "The Social Studies, Ethnic Diversity, and Social Change." The Elementary School Journal 87(5): 531-43. Baptiste, H.P. Jr. (1986). "Multicultural Education and Urban Schools from a Sociohistorical Perspective: Internalizing Multiculturalism". Journal of Educational Equity and Leadership 6(4): 295-312. Caldwell, J. (1989, January 20). "The Need for 'Anti-Racism' Education." Education Week 9(3): 32. Derman-Sparks, L. (1989, Winter). "Challenging Diversity With Anti-Bias Curriculum." School Safety, pp. 10-13. Gay, G. (1988). "Designing Relevant Curricula for Diverse Learners", Education and Urban Society, Vol. 20 No. 4, August 1988, 327-340. Gill, D., and Levidow, L. eds. (1987). "Anti-Racist Science Teaching." Free Association Books. London, England. Houston, R., Grubaugh, S. (1989, April). "Language for Preventing and Defusing Violence in the Classroom," Urban Education, vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 25-37. Mitchell, V. (1990, April). "Curriculum and Instruction to Reduce Racial Conflict," Clearinghouse on Urban Education, Number 64. Sleeter, C.E., and Grant, C.A. (1987). "An Analysis of Multicultural Education in the United States." Harvard Educational Review 57(4): 421-44. Suzuki, B.H. (1984, May). "Curriculum Transformation for Multicultural Education." Education and Urban Society 16(3): 294-322. Tatum, B.D. (1992). "Talking about Race, Learning about Racism: The Application of Racial Identity Development Theory in the Classroom". Harvard Educational Review, 62(1): 1-24. Wurzel, J.S.(1989). Toward Multiculturalism. A Reader in Multicultural Education. Intercultural Press, Inc. Yarmouth, ME.

Site Based Management/School Reform and The Change Process Ashby, S., Lar,,,n, R.; and Munroe, M.J. (1989, February). "Empowering Teachers: The Key to School-Based Reform." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Teacher Educators, St. Louis, MO. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED311 004). Bell, Warren E., (1979). Diagnosing A School's Readiness for Change: What to Look for When Starting an Innovation. Central California Facilitator Project. Chion-Kennedy, L. (1987, Winter). "A Report from the Field: The Coalition of Essential Schools", American Educator, 18-27. Cistone, P.J.; Fernandez, J.A.; and Tornillo, P.L. (1989, August). "School-Based Management/Shared Decision Making in Dade County." Education and Urban Society 21(4): 393-402. Comer, J.P. (1980). School Power: Implications of an Intervention Project, The Free Press: New York. Council of Great City Schools (1990, November). Strategies for Success: Achieving the National Urban Education Goals. Washington, D.C. Davies, D., et. al (1991). "On the Track of Comprehensive Reform...The Whole School for the Whole Child", Equity and Choice, 8(2): 24-27.

Appendices 343 353 Goswami, D., and Stillman, P.R. (1987). Reclaiming the Classroom: Teacher Research as an Agency for Change.: Boynton Cook Publishers. Upper Montclair, NJ. Joyce, B. Showers, B. (1982). "The Coaching of Teaching." Educational Leadership 40(1): 4-10. Lambert, L. (1988, May). "Staff Development Redesigned." Phi Delta Kappan, pp. 665-68. Lindquist; K.M., and Mauriel, J.L. (1989, August). "School-Based Management: Doomed to Failure?" Education and Urban Society 21(4): 402-16. Lomotey, K., and Swanson, A.D. (1989, August). "Urban and Rural Schools Research:Implications for School Governance." Education and Urban Society. 21(4): 436-54. McLaughlin, M.W. and Marsh, D.D. (1978). "Staff Development and School Change." Teachers College Record 80 (1): 69-94. !via len, B.; Ogawa, R.T.; and Kranz, J. (1990, February). "Site-Based Management: Unfilled Promise. Evidence Says Site-Based Management Hindered by Many Factors." The School Administrator, pp 32-59. Purkey, S.C., Smith, M.S. (1982). Effective SchoolsA Review, Wisconsin Center for Education Research: Madison, WI. Sizer, T.R.(1987, January/February). "High School Reform and the Reform of Teacher Education." Journal of Teacher Education, pp. 28-34. Sizer, T.R. (1984). Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School, Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, MA.

School Linked Services and Non-Academic Needs of Students Arroyo, W.. Eth, S. (1985). "Children Traumatized by Central American Warfare: Post- Traumatic Disorder in Children", Psychiatric Press, 1985, pp. 103-117. Benjamin, M.P., Morgan, P.C., (1989). Refugee Children Traumatized by War and Violence: The Challenge Offered to the Service Delivery System, Georgetown University Child Development Center: Washington D.C. Blank, M. and Lombardi, J. (1991). Toward Improved Services for Children and Families: Forging New Re lcnships through Collaboration. Institutefor Educational Leadership: Washington D.C. Bruner, Charles (1991). Thinking Collaboratively: Ten Questions and Answers to Help Policy Makers Improve Children's Services. Institute for Educational Leadership: Washington, D.C. Chang, H.N. (1992, Fall). "Diversity: The Essential Link in Collaborative Services" California Perspectives pp. 55-61. Chang, H.N., Gardner, S., (1989). Fighting Fragmentation: Collaborative Efforts to Serve Children and Families in California's Counties. California Tomorrow: San Francisco, CA. Cheng, L.R.L., (1989). "Service delivery to Asian/Pacific LEP children: A cross-cultural framework", Topics in Language Disorders, 9(3) pp. 1-14 Esquivel, G. B. and Keitel, M. (1990, February). "Counseling Immigrant Children in the Schools," Elementary School Guidance and Counseling, volume 24. Gardner, S. (1989, Fall). "Failur' by Fragmentation" California Tomorrow 4(4): 18-26. Intercultural Development Research Associates (1988). Equity in Counseling and Advising Students: Keeping Options Open. IDRA, San Antonio TX. Melaville A.A., and Blank, M.J. (1991). What It Takes: Structuring Interagency Partnerships to Connect Children and Families with Comprehensive Services. Education and Human Services Consortium: Washington D.C. Oruro, L.S. (1988). Making Education Work for Hispanic Americans: Some Promising Community-Based Practices. National Council of La Raza: Los Angeles, CA. Packard Foundation (1991). The Future of Children (2): 1.

354 344 The Unfinished Journey Pollard, J.S. (1990, May). "School-Linked ServicesSo that Schools Can Educate & Children Can Learn", Insights on Educational Policy and Practice, Number 20. Pollard, J.S. (1990, September). "School-Linked Services: So that Schools Can Educate and Children Can Learn, Part 3", Insights on Educational Policy and Practice, Number 23. Pollard, J.S. (1990, November). School-Linked Services for At-Risk Youth and Their Families: Trends in State Agencies, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. Ramirez, 0. (1989). "Mexican American Children and Adolescents", Children of Color: Psychological Interventions with Minority Youth, pp. 224-249. Ramon, G. (1985). Counseling Hispanic College-Bound High School Students, Clearinghouse on Urban Education. Robinson, E.R., Mastny, A.Y., (1989). Linking Schools & Community ServicesA Practical Guide, Center for Community Education, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Study Group on Services Integration (1993). Together We Can: A Guide to Crafting Community Based Family Centered Strategies for Integrating Education and Human Services. Institute for Educational Leadership: Washington D.C.

Assessment, Placement and Student Grouping American School Counselor Association(ASCA).(1983).Cross /Multicultural Counseling. Alexandria, VA: Author. Dawson, M.M. (1987). "Beyond Ability Grouping: A Review of the Effectiveness of Ability Grouping and its Alternatives." Social Psychology Review 16(3): 348-69. Fair Test (1990, Winter). Standardized Tests and Our Children: A Guide to Testing Reform. Cambridge MA: Author. Green, R.L., and Griffore, T.J. (1978). "School Desegregation, Testing and the Urgent Need for Equity in Education." Education 99(1): 16 -19. Hilliard, Asa. (1991). Testing African American Students. Southern Education Foundation. Illinois Fair Schools Coalition (1985, June). Holding Students Back: An Expensive Reform that Doesn't Work. Chicago, IL: Author. Medina, N., and Neill, M. (1988). Fallout from the Testing Explosion: How 100 Million Standardized Exams Undermine Equity and Excellence in America's Public Schools. Fair Test. Cambridge: MA. Mitchell, Ruth. (1992). Testing for Learning: How New Approaches to Evaluation Can Improve American Schools. The Free Press. Moore, D.R., and Davenport, S., (1988). The New Improved Sorting Machine. Designs for Change: Chicago, IL. Oakes, J. (1985) Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT. Oakes, J. (1986c). "Tracking, Inequality, and the Rhetoric of Reform: Why Schools Don't Change." Journal of Education 168 (1): 60-80. Pullin, D. (1985, December). "Educational Testing: Impact on Children at Risk." NCAS Backgrounder. National Coalition of Advocates for Students. Boston, MA. Slavin, R.E. (1987a, Summer). "Ability Grouping and Its Alternatives: Must We Track?" American Educator, pp. 32-48. Taylor, 0., and Lee, D.L. (1987, April/July). "Standardized Tests and African-American Children: Communication and Language Issues." Negro Educ. tional Review, p. 67. Wheelock, A. (1992). Crossing the Tracks: How "Untrarking" Can Save American Schools. The New Press. New York.

Appendices 345 BEST COPYAVAILABLE 355 Issues of Dialogue and Schooling Related to Diversity, Racism and Power Burbules, N.C., & Rice, S. (1991). "Dialogue Across Differences: Continuing the Conversation". Harvard Education Review, 61(4): 393-416. Cushner, K., and Trifonovitch, G. (1989, September). "Understanding Misunder- standing: Barriers to Dealing with Diversity." Social Education, pp. 319-21. Delpit, L. (1986). "Skills and Other Dilemmas of a Progressive Black Educator", Harvard Educational Review, 56: 379-385. Delpit, L. (1988). "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children". Harvard Educational Review, 58(3): 280-298. Fine, M. and L. Weiss (1992). Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools. State University of New York Press: Albany, NY. Foster, M. (1993). "Resisting Racism: Personal testimonies of African-American Teachers". In L. Weiss & M. Fine (Eds.) Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools. State University of New York Press: Albany, NY , pp. 273-288. Gandara, P. (1989, March). "Those Children Are Ours: Moving Toward Community." Equity and Choice, pp. 5-12. Grant, C.A. (1988, May). "The Persistent Significance of Race in Schooling." The Elementary School Journal 88(5): 561-69. Grant, C.A. (1990, September). "Desegregation, Racial Attitudes, and Intergroup Contact: A Discussion of Change." Phi Delta Kappan 72(1): 25-32. Henze, R., Lucas, T., & Scott, B. (1993). "Dancing With The Monster: Teachers Attempt to Discuss Power, Racism, and Privilege in Education." Paper presented at American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA. Hidalgo, N.M., McDowell, C.L., & Siddle, E.V., (Eds.) (1990). Facing Racism in Education. Reprint Series No. 21, Harvard Educational Review. Cambridge, MA. Hilliard, A.G. (1989, December/1990, January). "Teachers and Cultural Styles in a Pluralisr Society." Rethinking Schools, p.3. ivIclntosh, P (1989). "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Peace and Freedom, July/August. Pine, G.J., and Hilliard, A. (1990, April). "Rx for Racism: Imperatives for America's Schools." Phi Delta Kappan, pp. 593-600. Trent, W. (1990, Spring). "Race and Ethnicity in the Teacher Education Curriculum." Teachers College Record 91 (3): 361- 69.

Other Pertinent Literature Banks, F.F. (1988). "Factors Which Affect the Academic Achievement of Black Students." In C. Glenn, ed., Equity in Secondary Schools: New Perspectives, A Report to the Massachusetts Board of Education. Massachusetts Department of Education: Quincy, MA. Bastian, A.; Fruchter, N.; Gittell, M.; Gree, C.; and Haskins, K. (1985). Choosing Equality: The Case for Democratic Schooling. A Report of the New World Foundation. San Francisco, CA: Public Media Center. Chang, H.N. (1992, Fall). Affirming Children's RootsCultural and Linguistic Diversity in Early Care and Education. California Tomorrow: San Francisco, CA. Comer, J.P. (1988). "Educating Poor Minority Children", Scientific American, 259: 5, pp. 42-48. Chavez, R. et.al. (1991). "Dropping Out of School: Issues Affecting Culturally, Ethnically and Linguistically Distinct Students". The Journal of Educational Issues of Language Minority Students. Volume 8., pp. 1-21.

356 04 n The Unfinished Journey Cummins, J. & Sayers, D. (1990). "Education 2001: Learning Networks and Educational Reform". In Faltis & R. DeVillar (Eds.) Language Minority Students and Computers, Special Edition, Computers and the Schools (1-2): 1-29. Edmonds, R. (1979, October.) "Effective Schools for the Urban Poor", Educational Leadership, 15-24. Espinosa, R., & Ochoa, A. (1986). "Concentration of California Hispanic Students in Schools with Low Achievement: A Research Note." American Journal of Education, 95(1): 77-95. Fordham, S. (1988). "Racelessness as a Factor in Black Student's School Success: Pragmatic Strategy or Pyrrhic Victory?" Harvard Educational Review 58 (1): 54-84. Fordham, S., and Ogbu, J. (1986). "Black Student's School Success: Coping with the Burden of "Acting White." The Urban Review 18(3): 176-206. First, J.; Kellogg, J.B.; Wilshire Carrerra, J.; and Clamants, B. (1991). The Good Common SchoolMaking the Vision Work for All Children. National Coalition of Advocates for Students, Boston, MA. Gardner, H. (1985). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Basic Books, New York. Gibson, M., Ogbu, J. (1991). Minority Status and Schooling, Garland Publishing, New York. Hawley, W. (1989). "The Importance of Minority Teachers to the Racial and Ethnic Integration of American Society." Equity and Choice, volume 5. Kaesar, S. (1984, September). Citizen's Guide to Children Out of School: Issues, Data, Explanations, and Solutions to Absenteeism, Dropouts and Disciplinary Exclusion. Citizen's Council for Ohio Schools: Cleveland, OH. Kozo!, J. (1991). Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. Crown: New York. Levin, H. (1987, March). "Accelerated Schools for Disadvantaged Students." Educational Leadership 44 (6): 19-21. Levin, H. (1988). Accelerated Schools for At-Risk Students, Center for Policy :research in Education: New Brunswick, NJ. Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations (1989, October). "Intergroup Conflict in Los Angeles County Schools." Los Angeles, CA: Author (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 312-362). Nieto, S. (1992). Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education. Longman Publishers: New York. Olsen, L., and Mullen N.A. (1990). Embracing Diversity: Teachers' Voices from California's Classrooms. California Tomorrow: San Francisco, CA. Phillips, C.B. (1988, January). "Nurturing Diversity For Today's Children and Tomorrow's Leaders." Young Children, pp. 42-47. Pollard, D.S. (1989, October). "The Resurgence of Racism. Reducing the Impact of Racism on Students." Educational Leadership, pp. 73-75. Reyhner, J., and Garcia, R.L. (1989). "Helping Minorities Read Better: Problems and Promises." Reading Research and Instruction 28(3): 84-91. Rodriguez, Dr. C.E., (1992). "Student Voices: High School Students' Perspectives on the Latino Dropout Problem", submitted to: The Latino Commission on Educatonal Reform Subcommittee on the Causes and Solutions to Latino Dropout, April, 1992. Simons, J., Jablonski, D.M. (1991). An Advocate's Guide to Using Data, Children's Defense Fund: Washington D.C. Sutton, R.E. (1991, Winter). "Equity and Computers in the Schools: A Decade of Research" Review of Educational Research, Vol. 61, No. 4, pp. 475-503. Villegas, A.M. (1988). "School Failure and Cultural Mismatch: Another View". The Urban Review, 20(4): 253-265.

Appendices 347 357 APPENDIX G

Glossary

Authentic AssessmentThe use of new measures and instruments to evaluate student progress as an alternative to standardized achievement tests. The idea is to measure student progress and ability in ways which both provide meaningful information to everyone involved-student, teacher and parent or other caregiver- and to realis- tically assess the student's ability. Teachers collect writing samples, review research projects, observe students working on science experiments, and document student products to evaluate whether students are actually learning and using their knowledge in real situations. Bilingual Education/Instruction/TeachingA program designed for children of limited English proficiency to provide English language development and instruction in content in the pupil's native language. It is based upon second language acquisition research and the understanding that strong development of one's native tongue is the best basis for transfer to a second language. Bilingual education is an approach that emphasizes access to the curriculum by ensuring that students receive content area instruction in a language they can understand. Brain Compatible Research and TeachingA line of research and related instruction which focuses on the physical, emotional, psychological and intellectual environments students need for their brains to function at their highest level. Brown v. Board of EducationThe Supreme Court decision in 1954 which declared racial segregation and the "separate but equal" doctrine in public schools to be in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. California Business RoundtableA coalition of business and corporate leaders in California which produced a seminal report on school reform in California. This report formed the basis of a business sector dialogue with the legislature leading to the drafting and passage of SB 1274. Conflict ResolutionVarious programs have been developed by community agencies and schools to train students in the attitudes and skills of conflict resolution. With roots in the peace movement, violence prevention and juvenile justice fields, conflict resolution approaches share a focus on creating alternatives to violence. Most programs train a selected group of students to act as conflict managers that other students can turn to for help in resolving disputes. Another approach is to provide a curriculum for all students about listening, the use of "I messages" and other behaviors which facilitate conflict resolution. Consent DecreeAn agreement by a party in a lawsuit to cease activities asserted as illegal by the party seeking to obtain the consent decree. A consent decree in public education typically requires a school or district to refrain from or rectify activities resulting in inequitable treatment for racial or language minority students.

358 The Unfinished Journey Cooperative LearningA group centered learning process designed to develop the potential of each student while encouraging the growth of both academic and social skills. Working in teams, students are able to contribute their individual skills and strengths and learn how to work collectively toward common goals. Electronic or E-mailBy using computers hooked to each other through the phone lines with the use of a modem, E-mail allows substantive communication between students and/or staff at schools sites and other people at a variety of other locations- other schools, universities, agencies, etc. ESL (English as a Second Language)The most prevalent teaching approach for teaching English to speakers of other languages. The instruction of the English language includes but is not limited to structure, syntax, morphology, phonology, intonation, grammar, lexi- cology, semantics, etc. Every Student Succeeds (ESS)A California state school reform that focuses on helping schools serve 'at-risk' students. Schools were invited to apply to be ESS designated as they applied for state SB 1274 funding. No special funding came with being designated an ESS school, but technical assistance, support and professional development activities were provided by the California Department of Education. Healthy Start(see SB 620). HyperCardAn Apple computer application which stores information of various kindstext, charts, picturesand allows the user to construct multidimensional research files. Integrated Thematic InstructionA method of curriculum design and delivery which is interdisciplinary-presenting subject matter to students in a way that links traditionally separate subjects. The link is usually a theme, which facilitates the students' understanding of the connections between different chunks of knowledge. For example, students may learn about how plants grow from seeds into full grown plants (science) as they learn how to use a ruler for measurement and how to record the growth in a bar graph (math). Lau v. Nichols A Supreme Court decision in 1974 which ruled that every student must have equal access to education, and that such access cannot be denied to students with limited English proficiency. The court determined that merely providing LEP students with the same teachers, text and curricula provided to English speakers did not constitute equal educational opportunity. Special instruction to make the educational program linguistically accessible to LEP students is necessary. LEP (Limited English Proficient) The official State Department of Edu- cation designation for students who cannot function effectively in either oral or written uses of the English language. Such students are entitled to an educational program which includes language support services to prepare them to function fully in an English taught curriculum and program.

349 Appendices 359 Maintenance Bilingual ProgramA bilingual education approach in which development of the native language continues after the child acquires English skills to ensure that a child maintains his/her native language and becomes fully literate in two languages. Primary Intervention ProgramFunded through the California Depart- ment of Mental Health, this program serves selected 'at-risk' children in grades K through 3 and provides for one staff person to interact with the children in non-directed play to provide some special attention in order to improve their self esteem. Primary Language InstructionTeaching students who are LEP in their first or home language. This is to provide them access to the subject matter that other students are learning in English. PortfoliosA tool used in authentic assessment. "Portfolios" are the folders a teacher keeps on each student in which she/he places examples of the student's school work. Portfolio assessment means evaluation based on a review and understanding of the student's actual work examples. School Linked ServicesA model or aspect of collaborative services which focuses on service integration and delivery at the school site. This is favored by many because it provides students and their families easier access to needed services, and often means students can get their health and other needs met without missing much school time. School Site CouncilThe council that is mandated by Senate Bill 65 to oversee a school's "School Improvement Program". The SB6S legislation mandates that this council be comprised of one half parents or other community members and the other half is the principal, teachers and classified staff. These councils range from rubber stamping bodies to truly democratic groups which are empowered to improve the school program. SB 620 (The California Healthy Start Initiative)This initiative appropriated funds by the legislature to encourage schools, in partnership with human service agencies, to plan for and provide coordinated and integrated services for youth and their families. To date, the initiative has distributed a total of $32 million in the form of both planning and operational grants. Shared Decision MakingA governance approach in which decisions are made by a group of people representing different perspectives or roles. In schools these might be teachers, classified staff, administrators, parents, students, etc. The degree to which a school site uses shared decision making depends upon how much authority the principal is willing to accede. Sheltered Instruction Ateaching approach for LEP students which utilized English as the language of instruction, and instructional techniques based in second language acquisition research to specifically gear instruction to be comprehensible to students who are not fluent in English.

360 350 The Unfinished Journey SIP (School Improvement Program)A state program (authorized by SB 65) which allows schools to apply for grants for improving student achievement. Monies can be used for supplementary enrichment purposes such as student activities, assemblies, library resources, the student study team and parent communication. Often a major portion of the money is used for staff development. Site Based ManagementA school governance model which puts decision making and managing authority at the school site level, instead of at the district. Title VIIAuthorized by Congress in 1967 as part of the Elementary and Secondary Schools Education Act, this program offers grant money to school sites, districts or universities for academic and support programs for limited English proficient students, special transitional bilingual education programs and model literacy programs for families. Transitional Bilingual EducationAn approach to serving Limited Eng- lish Proficient students which uses the student's native language to the extent necessary to facilitate acquisition of English language skills and content area instruction. There is no goal of bilingualism or effort to develop and/or maintain literacy in the child's home language. WaiverPermission for a school to not follow some specific regulation, whether it be within their union contract with the district or a state education regulation. In the process of restructuring, schools often apply for waivers in order to gain the flexibility to change the school schedule, job descriptions, minutes of instruction, etc.

351 Appendices 361 APPENDIX H

Case Study Schools (listed to facilitate networking)

Elementary: Vaughn Street Elementary Rancho Milpitas Middle Oceana High 13330 Vaughn Street 1915 Yellowstone 401 Paloma Ave Alianza Elementary San Fernando, CA 91340 Milpitas, CA 95035 Pacifica, CA 94044 440 Arthur Road 818-896-7461 408-945-5561 415-355-4131 Watsonville, CA 95076 408-728-6333 Virginia Rocca Barton Wilson Middle Overfelt (William C.) High Elementary 3838 Orange Ave 1835 Cunningham Ave Fourth Street Elementary 680 Las Casitas Drive San Diego, CA 92105 San Jose, CA 95122 420 S. Amalia Ave Salinas, CA 93905 619-280-1661 408-259-0540 Los Angeles,CA 90022 408-757-9922 213-266-0182 Santa Maria High Windsor Elementary High: 901 S. Broadway Frank Paul Elementary 9491 Starr Road Santa Maria, CA 93454 1300 Rider Ave Artesia High Windsor, CA 95492 12108 E. Del Amo 805-925-2567 Salinas, CA 93905 707-838-6628 408-753-5740 Boulevard Lakewood, CA 90715 Hawthorne Elementary Middle: 310 926-5566 1700 28th Ave Oakland, CA 94601 Carr Intermediate Belmont High 510-533-8362 2120 W. Edinger Street 1575 W. Second Street Santa Ana, CA 92704 Los Angeles, CA 90026 Mark Keppel Elementary 714-241-6430 213-269-0345 6630 E. Mark Keppel St Paramount, CA 90273 De Anza Junior High Calexico High 310-602-6958 824 Blair Ave 1030 Encinas Ave Calexico, CA 92231 Calexico, CA 92231 Madison Elementary 619-357-3124 619- 357-2271 2939 Mission Rd Stockton,CA 95204 Horace Mann Middle De Wolfe High 209-944-4268 3351 23rd Street 2021 N. Clark Ave San Francisco, CA 94110 Fresno, CA 93703 Manchester Elementary 415-826-4504 209-441-3233 Highway One, P.O.Box 98 Manchester,CA 95459 MacDowell Sixth Grade Florin High 707-882-2374 5095 Arvinels Ave 7956 Cottonwood Drive San Diego, CA 92117 Sacramento, CA 95828 Melrose Elementary 619-278-5917 916-689-8600 1325 53rd Ave Oakland, CA 94601 O'Farrell Community Franklin Senior High 510-533-7506 6130 Skyline Drive 820 N. Avenue 54 San Diego, CA 92114 Los Angeles, CA 90042 Paul Revere Elementary 619- 263-3009 310-254-7104 555 Tompkins Ave San Francisco, CA 94110 Olive Vista Junior High International Studies 415-695-5650 14600 Tyler Street Academy Sylmar, CA 91342 693 Vermont Street Valencia Park Elementary 818- 367-1071 San Francisco, CA 94107 5880 Skyline Dr. 415- 695-5866 San Diego, CA 92114 619-264-0125

362 352 The Unfinished Journey